A Gift From: _samalander
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title: bomb shelters under your skin
A Gift For: sweetwatersong
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary/Prompt Used: Clint's marriage is over, so he takes the assignment no one else will: killing the Black Widow.
Author's Note:From a song prompt: Girlyman, The Shape I Found You In
I spent twenty lifetimes at your door
But your heart was busy within
Building bomb shelters under your skin
That's the shape I found you in
Happy holidays, sweetwatersong!


banner by ohmydarlingdear

Clint closes his eyes, trying to forget the way Bobbi looked as he told her.


"I can't do this, anymore. I can't be married."


She didn't even look surprised. The cold resignation on her face is what still stings, like she'd been waiting for this. For him to fail, to give up. It burns, and it's lighting him up inside so much that it's hard to breathe.


He tries not to think about it, not to think about the white gold of his wedding ring on the kitchen counter, not to think about the apartment they rented, the stuff they'd accumulated. There's no use, he knows. No use in dwelling. It's over. He knew it was over long before he said it, and she knew it, too.


Yet another thing Clint Barton failed at. Yet another thing he couldn't hold together, no matter how hard he tried. How hard Bobbi tried. How hard they tried together.


The case file in front of him is almost serene in its color-coded folder. Red. Top secret. Dangerous. Probably suicidal.


Fuck it, he thinks, flipping the pages open and looking at the face of the target. If I'm gonna die, now's as good a time as any.

---

Most missions are at least in interesting places -- places like London, or Seoul, or Lima. Somewhere he'd wanted to go as a kid, somewhere that seemed more magical and beautiful than Iowa.


And to tell the truth, Australia had always seemed like the kind of place that would be magical. Except this target was hiding in Queensland, in a little nowhere town on the coast that seems to be 60% cattle and 20% beach. It's all of twelve blocks, Clint thinks, and hotter than hell. He's been here a week, tracking the Black Widow, and he's not sure he'll make it. If the target doesn't kill him, the heat may.


Not that it matters, so long as he doesn't have to go back to an empty apartment and the remains of a tattered life.


He finds her in the most mundane of ways, which disappoints him, a little. There's almost nothing to do in the town once you've seen the fibreglass mango, except go to the beach. So Clint takes to sitting in lobbies, alternating hotels in hopes that he'll find a petite redhead, a dangerous package of knives and attitude, heading out to lie in the sun.


And he does. She's even wearing a floppy hat.


Clint follows her as she leaves to hotel, keeps a safe distance through the rather straight-forward grid of streets. (Which, what a disappointment. She could have chosen an island somewhere, Mykonos or Santorini, with twisty alleyways, like a propper spy film. They could have a shootout like an Ang Lee movie, complete with all the doves money can buy. But no, he gets Queensland.) She stops once or twice, looking at something in a window, contemplating a dress or a necklace. Checking out her reflection. She's vain, he thinks, like so many women in their profession are. Probably lies on a bed of rubies, diamonds on the soles of her shoes, all that. But she never lingers long, and eventually she turns a corner. When he follows her a few moments later, she's waiting in her bikini top, her canvas bag hanging off of her arm.


"You're following me," the Black Widow tell him, as if it's news to either one of them.


"Yeah," he agrees, and they stand, moment bleeding into moment under the hot mid-morning sun, the dumpsters that line the walls of the alley just starting to stink of hot garbage.


"You're here to kill me," she says, her eyes still, her face as serene and resolved as Bobbi's was.


"Yeah."


The Black Widow laughs. It's a hollow noise, something more akin to a cry of pain. He wishes it were coming from anyone else, even himself -- that it wasn't coming from this little girl, this tiny thing. But that's her hook, he knows. Make them think she's helpless. Make them think they're saving her, and she's so grateful and the mark is so dead.


"Please," she says, reaching into her bag.


Clint doesn't let her get any further than that, he quickly draws his own gun from his waistband and flips the safety off, holding it out towards her at the same time as she levels her barrel at him.


Neither one pulls the trigger.


Clint's mouth is dry, from the heat or smell or the fact that he's going to die, so it's no surprise to him that she speaks first.


"What's the matter, SHIELD?" she asks, her tone sharp, taunting. "Can't kill me?"


"You're not exactly taking me out, either," he says, as they continue not moving, a bead of sweat forming on the nape of his neck.


The Black Widow rolls her eyes. "What, you think I won't? I'm just curious," she says, raking her gaze over him. "What's a man with the arms of a -- what, a weight lifter? an archer? -- and a tan line on his ring finger doing in a back alley, waiting for me to shoot him?"


"Waiting," he echoes, though her words strike him harshly. She's goading him, he thinks. Trying to get him to act first, to act foolishly.


"For?"


He shakes his head. "What are you waiting for, your World's Deadliest Assassin prize? Cause I don't have that. No big canvas bag here."


The girl -- and she's very young, nineteen at the most -- barks another pained laugh. She tilts her head back, the floppy hat falling to the rough asphalt. He almost wishes there were a puddle, something dramatic to punctuate the moment. "World's Greatest Nothing," she says. "Pull the trigger."


"No," Clint says, letting his arm waver, though she doesn't take the bait, doesn't reach out and strike him to knock his gun free.


"Why not?" she demands, her voice rising. He thinks another person might be yelling, but she's cool, controlled. There are cracks forming in her demeanor, spidery hair-line fractures, but he didn't cause them. They've been there far longer than that. "You have the shot, take it."


"No!" he snaps back, though he's not totally sure what's stopping him. He takes his finger off the trigger, and relaxes his stance a little, hoping she'll move.


She does, dropping her gun and lunging for his, pulling the barrel flush to her forehead. "Please," she breathes. "Just do it."


The bile rises in Clint's throat. He knows it's an act. It has to be an act. But something about this desperate child hurts him, cuts him like he's never been cut before. He reaches forward with his thumb, and clicks the safety back on.


The Black Widow drops her hold on his gun and looks at him, her eyes bright with some kind of emotion, though Clint can't rightly say if it's genuine or not. "End it," she whispers. "Let me go."


"You're --" Clint chokes on the next word. "I -- I can't."


He hangs his head, his gun loose in his grip. It's an invitation, he thinks. This should be easy for her. She should put one in his brain, let his widow collect life insurance and move on with her life.


"Your wife," the girl in front of his says, instead of shooting him. "The one whose ring you wore."


Clint looks up into her bright eyes. The emotion is fear, he decides, more than anything else.


"Did I kill her?"


Later, Clint will be ashamed at his reaction. He'll regret it for a long time, feel the need to atone for it over and over. But in the moment he doesn't think, he just laughs. It's long, and it's bitter and a little unhinged, the kind of laugh that would get him sent to psych if he pulled it out around anyone from SHIELD. "No," he says, after a long moment. "That would be too easy."

---

The Black Widow watches impassively as he picks up her gun -- which isn't even loaded -- before she hands him her bag. "My name is Natasha," she offers, which surprises Clint for a reason he can't name.


"I'm Clint," he nods. Natasha studies him for a moment before turning on her heel and walking away, as if she knows he'll follow.


He does. He doesn't rightly know what they're doing, doesn't have any idea if this is how she'll kill him. It doesn't seem to matter, though, not when he can watch her move through the streets again. He can't do it, he decides. This mission is a bust. He knows he should call for an extraction, let the next agent take their shot, but he can't. Even if she pulls a gun on him, even if she seduces him and cuts his throat -- he can't kill this girl, and he won't walk away. Not until he has answers.


She doesn't kill him on the way back to the hotel. He blinks at the dimness of the lobby as she leads him off of the streets and guides him into the elevator, which takes them to the 14th floor. He sits at a little table in her suite, watching the ceiling fan turn in lazy circles while she makes tea. Finally, Natasha returns, her back ramrod-straight, and she sets the tea in front of him before taking the seat across from him as the steam rises into the hot air.


"Her name is Bobbi," he says, watching the pale brown liquid in his cup. "She's an agent, too. With SHIELD. We got married five days after we met."


"Oh," says Natasha, like there's anything else she could say to that. She takes a sip of her tea. Clint is enthralled by her movements, so precise. Almost bird-like in their quickness.


"She's a good person," Clint continues, though he doesn't know why. Every moment he's breathing is a surprise, is a moment he doesn't quite understand. "I like her. I just -- I don't like being married to her. I didn't know," he sighs. "She wants to take care of me. And that's, you know, not a bad thing? Except I'm in my thirties. I don't need a mommy to kiss my boo-boos."


Natasha's face is inscrutable, but Clint isn't sure he could stop talking now if he tried. "She's beautiful, you know? But we -- everything's an argument. Did I touch the microwave with my greasy hands, did she erase the TiVo. Nothing is easy. It's all a fight."


"You don't love her," Natasha says.


"I do," he shrugs. "That's the thing. But you can love someone, and still not -- still not be with them. Still not know how to --"


Clint blinks, suddenly realizing that he's here, in the hotel room of his mark, drinking tea and talking about his marital issues. It all feels surreal, like a joke he'd tell in the office.


"Hey," he says. "How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?"


Natasha doesn't say anything, just cocks her head and waits, like this is something that will give her further insight.


"Two," Clint says. "One to take the giraffe out of the bathtub, and one to melt the clocks."


Neither one of them laughs, both too absorbed in their private little miseries. Clint takes a sip of his tea, which he's vaguely hoping isn't poisoned.


"Why do you want to die?" he asks, when even the steam from their tea stops being enthralling.


"Why do you?" she counters, showing the same cracks in her facade that he saw on the street. "I -- I don't want to kill anyone anymore."


Clint doesn't say anything, just waits, just tries to hold his breath as she finds the words.


"I burned down a hospital," she says, her voice barely a whisper. "I burned down a hospital and I blocked the doors first. You -- you know what they have a lot of in hospitals?"


"No," he says, his heart in his chest.


"Babies," Natasha says, her voice cold in a way that makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise. "I don't -- I don't have a problem with that," she says. "I mean, I've killed kids before. Usually for, you know, to get their parents to do whatever I wanted. Kill a kid, break a mother. But this -- I don't know. It was different. I've killed people my -- I made my first kill when I was ten. Killed a grown man. But this felt like -- it felt evil. And I've never felt evil before."


"What did it feel like?" he asks, turning to look out the window, the bright sun seeming alien in the gloom of her words. "The rest of it?"


"Necessary," she says.


Clint looks at her, studies the girl at the table with him for a long moment. "Do you always do what's necessary?"


"Yes," she shrugs, like that's no big deal.


He reaches into her bag and pulls out the empty gun she pointed at him in the street, setting it on the table between them. "Liar."


The smile that splits Natasha's face is old; it's sad and weary. "If you were anyone else," she says. "That would have been enough."


"But I'm me."


"But you're you," she agrees.


Clint laughs, almost half as bitterly as she did before. He stands and stretches, feeling cold, like the sunlight is totally gone from his skin. "So," he says, moving to part the curtains, to glance out at the street. "What if I had an idea?"


It's insane, he knows that. It's a bad idea by every metric of bad ideas. But still, he turns to face her again, and there is warmth there, by the window.


"What if you joined SHIELD?"


Natasha doesn't say anything, and for a moment Clint wonders if she's even heard him.


"Is -- will that get me what I want?" she asks, the shock naked in her voice. "Will they -- take care of a threat, if it walks into their house?"


"No," he says, simply, turning to look outside again, to watch the smattering of tourists on the street below. "But I will. If you get through a year, if it's not better. If you want to die. I'll kill you."


"A month," she says.


"Six," Clint offers. He hears her stand, feels the movement of the air in the room as she comes to look out next to him.


"Do you think any of them know?" she asks, her eyes tracking the people below. "Do you think they know that we exist? That they're all in danger because -- because I exist? Because you do?"


Clint smiles sadly. "That's the point," he says. "That's why SHIELD is there. We stop them from knowing. So they can go look at palm trees and plastic mangoes and never worry about the assassins on the fourteenth floor."


"Six months," she says. "And if I'm not -- if I still want it?"


"I'll pull the trigger," he says.


"What about you?"


Clint turns away from the window, looking her in the eye for a moment. "What about me?"


"You --" the girl shrugs. "You want to die, too."


He sighs, running a finger over the wrinkles in the gauzy hotel curtain. "Four days ago I took off my wedding ring and told my wife I'm done. We've been married three years. I came here thinking that my life is already over, so what's the point, you know?" His voice is shaking, which surprises him. He's not usually this raw with anyone, but there's something about her, something about Natasha and the way she stands in her bare feet and looks up at him through her lashes that just opens up all the windows in his heart, lets the air in and the words out. "I didn't have anything to go back for. Nothing. But -- now I gotta make sure someone's there for you, in six months. Someone to pull the trigger."


"Why did you come?" she asks, her voice barely a whisper. "Why did you want me to do it? Why not yourself?"


The words rush through Clint, his mouth hanging open in shock. "You know --" he laughs, surprised. "It never even occurred to me. That -- that I could choose that."


Natasha laughs, too, her voice sweet and gentle. She's more stable now, he decides, more able to handle this than she was on the street. "Me neither," she breathes.


Clint reaches down, impulsively, and grabs her hand, lacing their fingers together. "Six months," he says softly, squeezing her hand.


"Six months," she agrees, but he thinks she knows, thinks they both know, that he'll never have to pull that trigger.