A Gift From: franztastisch
Title: Safe Harbour
A Gift For: gsparkle
Rating: Teen
Warnings/Choose Not To Warn: No warnings apply
Summary/Prompt Used: Lighthouse AU
Author's Note: Beta’d by inkvoices. This probably ended up being less romantical than you were hoping for, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. :)

Safe Harbour

Við munum gera betur næst / Þetta er ágætis byrjun
( We’ll do better next time / This is a good beginning )

Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós

Clint’s been in town two months before he sees her.

“Who’s that?” he asks as he hauls the night’s catch onto the quay, crate after crate of herring and cod and squid.

Jack looks up at Clint’s question, but looks away without answering as soon as it becomes clear who he’s referring to. It’s a wary silence, the kind you give feral dogs or known violent drunks or the town prostitute, but this woman doesn’t look like she fits any of those categories. She’s dressed sensibly; heavy wool skirts and large oiled raincoat, with a stained yellow sou’wester caught around her neck by its string. She’s buying sprat and herring and that one black squid that Nick caught last night, and Clint can see how the ebb of people flows around her. How there’s always a gap, like people are worried to get too close.

Clint hauls the last crate before making his way back onto the boat, to check the nets and fling those last few fish off the deck and either into the sea or onto the quay for the cats. His hands ache from the cold and he’s looking forward to a hot bath and warm stew, but the boat needs proper mooring, and the fuel needs checking, and it’s his turn to mend the nets. It’ll be a few hours before he can head into the warm yet.



The woman is there again the next Wednesday, once again buying sprats and herring and whatever black squid has been caught that night. She also has a basket full of kelp and a black cat following in her wake.

Clint doesn’t ask Jack about her again because he can see the way Jack swerves to avoid her – how so many of the town’s fishermen avoid her. Fishermen are superstitious folk – Clint knows better than most – but this seems extreme even then, though Clint can’t work out why. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing notable about the woman past her auburn hair glinting in the dawn light, although for fishermen red hair is enough to garner suspicious glances. Maybe it’s because, despite there being nothing notable about the woman apart from her hair, Clint can’t help but notice her anyway.

The black cat climbs some lobster pots out for mending and yowls in the woman’s face, making her laugh. She gives the cat a sprat, scratching it behind the ear with hands Clint can tell even from this distance are rough from hard work, before walking on down the quay.

“That’s not a good idea, Clint.”

Phil’s voice jolts Clint out of his musings.

“What?”

Phil shakes his head. “Some things are best left alone.”

“Why? Who is she?”

Over Phil’s shoulder, Clint sees Jack give him a wary glance, and he can’t help but notice that everyone in the vicinity seems to be holding their breath, as if waiting for Phil’s answer.

“Let it go, Clint.”

Clint frowns and straightens, the rope in his hands falling slack. Phil is one of the most reliable sailors Clint knows; he knows all the currents and hidden sandbars within a hundred miles of the port and doesn’t get spooked in the way that many sailors do. He’s unflappable and calm in a crisis, he’s sensible. So this reticence is out of character. It speaks of reluctance, even of fear.

So Clint drops it, because fishermen are a superstitious lot and Clint can’t afford to lose his place on this crew.



The best thing about taking rooms at The Hope and Anchor is Miss Darcy. She’s feisty and fun, but no pushover, and watching her sass out-of-towners who should know better is a great accompaniment to The Hope and Anchor’s already fantastic food.

She was also the first friend Clint made after arriving, her good cheer cutting through his long-carried black mood. He owes her a lot.

“Seen a mermaid yet?” she asks as she sails past, plates stacked high.

Clint laughs as she disappears into the kitchen, but she’s back out almost immediately with a steaming bowl in her hands.

“What’s it today, Darce?” Clint asks. He’ll eat whatever he’s given, so Darcy always just brings him the daily special.

“Colcannon,” she says, placing the bowl of hot mackerel soup in front of him. “There’s some sourdough on its way and Maria brought us a fresh batch of butter from the creamery.”

Clint’s mouth waters at the thought. He didn’t know he could have opinions on butter until he tried Maria’s. He doesn’t know what she does, but he’s never tasted better. Jack jokes that she sings to the cows, but Jack is an asshole and also Maria doesn’t seem the type to sing to anything really, least of all her cows.

As expected, the food is delicious and Clint mops up the last of his colcannon with his bread, idly watching Nick and Phil chatting quietly over their beers before they head to bed. Midmorning is always full of fishermen coming off the boats and people are used to seeing men downing pints at ten a.m. while warming themselves by the fire. Clint’ll have to be up by ten tonight himself, so it’s colcannon and beer and bed for him too.

He’s starting to miss the sun. That always happens as the nights get longer. Soon he’ll be pale and wan, his freckles fading almost to nothing after weeks of sleeping days and working nights. But it’ll be Harvest soon and a week off for festivities around the town. Hopefully it won’t rain.

“You look preoccupied.” Without him noticing, Darcy has appeared at his side, her hands free of plates or mugs for a change. She nudges his shoulder with her elbow. “What’s up?”

“The woman with the red hair,” he says, surprising himself, “who is she?”

He’s not looking at her, but he can feel Darcy still before letting out a sigh.

“Clint…”

“What?”

He looks up to find most of the levity has dropped from Darcy’s expression, to be replaced with something caught between reluctance and resignation.

“The back parlour is free,” Darcy says eventually. “C’mon.”

Clint stands, wiping his hands on his napkin before following Darcy into the back parlour. It’s cold in there; the fire not yet lit and the shutters half closed, sending a knife of sunlight to bisect the room. Darcy pulls a stool off one of the tables, flipping it over and putting it down before gesturing for Clint to sit and repeating the process for herself.

It smells of cold ash. Darcy stares at him as if sizing him up and Clint fights not to fidget, not even sure why he wants to.

“She’s the lighthouse keeper, Clint,” Darcy says eventually. “The red haired woman is the lighthouse keeper.”

Clint stares at her. “Oh,” he says.

The lighthouse is the only reason this town is known. It’s the only reason it’s survived. This entire stretch of coastline is treacherous – sheer cliffs and unexpected breakers and shifting sandbars – and though the sea is rich, fishing has always been a risky business. But lighthouses are…

The first thing Clint was told when he arrived to work the fleet here was about the day the lighthouse arrived, seventy years ago. Town history retold so often it’s practically myth. It was October, Clint knows, and foggy, and when the fog finally cleared there it was on the last of the rocky islets before the open water; tall and striped, it’s light throwing safety across the choppy sea.

No one knows why this town was chosen and no one wants to enquire too closely lest good fortune be taken away. But seventy years ago a lighthouse came and as a result the town survived the civil war, and the uncommon drought, and the pox. The town prospered. So people are grateful, but it’s still a lighthouse.

People are still scared.

“Yeah,” Darcy says with a sigh. “‘Oh’ just about covers it.”

She wipes her hands in her apron – reflexively, Clint’s sure, because her hands can’t be wet now.

“Look,” she says. “Yes, she’s the lighthouse keeper, but it’s stupid to – ” Darcy cuts herself off. Starts again. “Lighthouses are good, whatever people say. They keep us safe. She keeps us safe. The men are suspicious of her, but really they’re just scared of things they don’t understand.” Darcy smoothes her apron over her lap. “She’s helped women in town,” she says after a pause. “She’s helped me.”

Clint looks at Darcy, noting the tilt to her mouth, the way her eyes cut away from his. He can guess what kind of help the lighthouse keeper provides women with.

“I’m telling you because – well, because, surprisingly, you’re more sensible than most.” A quick grin flashes across Darcy’s face and Clint rolls his eyes. “Really, she’s just a woman, Clint.”

She’s not and they both know it, but Clint understands what she means nonetheless.

“Thanks for telling me, Darcy,” he says, giving her restless hand a quick squeeze.

Darcy smiles and hops off her stool. “I’ll be wanted in the kitchen,” she says. “Now that you’re here, would you get the rest down for me?” She gestures at the stools and begins to walk away.

“Oh,” Clint says, “I see how it is,” and he grins when she laughs.

“I’ll give you one of Wanda’s figgy ‘obbins,” she calls as she leaves.

It doesn’t take too long to get the room in order, and Clint lights the fire just to be thorough before heading up to bed. That’s worth one of Miss Wanda’s figgy ‘obbins for sure.



He doesn’t see the lighthouse keeper again for a couple of weeks. There’s trouble with the burner on the boat and they limp into harbour late into the morning one week, missing the bulk of the trade. But thankfully they’ve caught herring and Odinson can always be relied upon to buy herring for smoking, his business booming due to the safety the lighthouse provides.

The next week? Well, the next week it just seems that the lighthouse keeper doesn’t need fish.

But the week after Clint finds a black squid when he hauls in the nets and he knows.

“Is Rhodes free, do you know? For the kelp.”

Her voice doesn’t cut through the hubbub of the harbour, but Clint hears it as though it does.

There’s a murmur of denial and Clint can tell that she’s closing in on him – him with their morning’s catch of huge cod and the one, lone, black squid. The knowledge makes him agitated, fidgety. He feels like a child knowing a teacher will call on them; anticipation and dread.

“Is that a black squid?”

He looks up and her eyes are clear as sea glass.

“Yes,” he says, the word hanging between them untouched until she smiles and he looks away.

“How much for it?”

He shrugs and balls his hands into fists by his side.

“Bycatch,” he says, though he’s not even sure how they managed to get black squid as bycatch to cod. They shouldn’t be together in the same part of the ocean. “You can have it for free.”

All he can hear is the scream of the gulls. It’s like the rest of the town has disappeared.

“No,” she says eventually. “I can’t.”

He looks at her.

She’s a lighthouse keeper. He doesn’t know much about lighthouse keepers, but he knows enough to know she’s not lying. She works on exchanges, monetary or otherwise. It’s part of her contract, though he’s not sure who the contract is with. It’s not with the town.

“However much you usually pay then,” he says.

She smiles at him again and presses a silver piece into his palm. It’s far too much for one black squid and he almost refuses it, but something in her expression holds him back. He curls his fingers around it instead.

It must be hard, Clint suddenly thinks, to give so much to a place that will always be scared of you.

She’s just turning away when he speaks again.

“Are you looking for kelp?” Her eyes meet his again and he almost falters. “We’re – I’m going out ‘round the headland westways after the Festival. I can get some for you.”

Her oilskin is a rich green and too big for her, and it makes her hair burn. She looks like a lighthouse keeper.

“It’s not – ” She cuts herself off with a wry twist to her mouth. It’s the least composed he’s ever seen her. “I have kelp,” she says eventually. “Rhodes is – he helps me move it.”

There’s a charged silence.

“I can help,” he says suddenly, stuttering and awkward. “If you need it.”

Clint watches surprise swim across her features, but any reply she might make is cut off by the excited call of, “Tuna!” from the boat just coming into harbour.

Clint turns to look.

It’s the Avenger and Steve is standing at the prow, hawser in hand, and folk run out to catch and secure the line he throws out. Behind him, Clint sees Val, the only woman he’s ever known to go out with a fishing fleet, and Jim struggling under the weight of a truly enormous bluefin tuna. It’s so huge that, as soon as the boat is moored safely, Steve has to help Val and Jim haul it over side of the boat and into the waiting arms of Phil and Nick on the quayside.

“Almost nine hundred pounds, we think!” Jim calls excitedly. “Nearly caught another but the bastard got away!”

For reasons Clint has never quite grasped, every now and again Steve goes out to the deep ocean to line-catch tuna. It’s reckless and, for anyone else, a complete waste of time, but Steve seems to just know where they’ll be and he’s successful more often than not. Apparently there was a time, before Clint arrived in town, where others would try to emulate his success, but no one managed to. Alex and Jack stuck it out the longest, but after Alex nearly got Steve’s friend James killed in a storm they gave up.

Now, if people want tuna, they wait for Steve.

Clint laughs and shakes his head. “Just in time for Harvest too,” he says, mostly to himself. Of course Steve would try now. Even Clint knows it’s not a Harvest Festival without some kind of grand gesture from Steve Rogers, and he’s barely been here three months.

“It’s beautiful.”

The lighthouse keeper’s voice is so quiet Clint almost misses her words. He didn’t realise she’d moved closer to the quayside – closer to him – until she spoke. Her eyes are fixed on the tuna, its scales glinting silver and blue in the morning light, and she looks almost reverent, like she’s seen something special, something holy.

But then the expression is gone, shuttered away as she turns to him once more.

“All right,” she says.

“All right what?” Clint asks stupidly, because for a moment, looking at that huge tuna glittering on the granite quayside in the morning light, he could see something beautiful too.

“If you’re willing to help me move my kelp, I’d be grateful.”

“I – all right.” Though he offered, her acceptance is unexpected. It’s as though the arrival of the tuna somehow threw everything into disarray.

“I’m storing it in the Odinson’s cold store. There are probably about three baskets of it.”

“Oh.” Clint feels all kinds of stupid. “I can’t – I haven’t eaten. I’ve been – it’s been almost fourteen hours. I need sleep.”

Tiredness is pulling on his bones like gravity. The cod was worth it, because cod always fetches a good price, but Clint needs the warmth of a fire and whatever stew Darcy has going at The Hope and Anchor. He needs a chance to be warm, and dry, and not on his feet. He needs rest.

“Oh I’m – sorry. That was. I assumed you meant – ”

“I can do tomorrow?” Clint cuts off her stuttered rambling and only feels slightly bad for it. “Seven a.m. on the quay. I’ll make sure Lucky Dog is ready for you, unless you think something bigger is needed.”

Lucky Dog is his little fishing boat and she’s been with him through thick and thin. She gets fewer chances in open water since he joined the crew of the Delta Blue, but she’s reliable and Clint’s loath to give her up.

The lighthouse keeper shakes her head. “Lucky Dog is fine,” she says. “And I’m Natasha.”

She holds out her hand to shake and he takes it in his. It’s strong and rough with calluses. They shake once, then let go.

“Clint,” Clint says. “See you tomorrow, seven a.m.”

“Seven a.m.” she echoes.



The next morning the sky hangs low over the horizon, thick bellied clouds roiling above while the wind tugs white horses from the sea. Clint secures Lucky Dog more firmly to the quay, making sure everything that needs to be is fastened down securely. He feels uneasy. It’s supposed to be clear. It’s supposed to be clear for the next three days.

If the kelp didn’t have a time limit on it he’d suggest that Natasha wait, but as it is, he tosses a penny into the water in the hope that the offering will keep the weather from breaking until he’s back at The Hope and Anchor with Darcy and a steaming bowl of chowder.

“The kelp is at Odinson’s?” Clint calls over the wind.

“Yes.” Natasha's skirts billow around her ankles. “Sif will help us move it” – they pass into the lee of Odinson’s warehouse and the sound of the wind drops – “so we’ll only need to make one trip.” Natasha casts her eyes across the harbour, a frown on her face. “Hopefully the weather will hold off.”

There’s a rattle and screech of rusted hinges, and the warehouse doors open, sending the smell of drying herring rolling out across the quay. Even Clint, who is surrounded by the smell of fish almost every day, wrinkles his nose.

The kelp is in wicker baskets almost as large as Natasha herself, with lids that buckle closed and great leather straps for ease of unloading. They’re not light, but with Sif’s help they’re squared away on Lucky Dog in good time. Clint squints at the harbour mouth, where he can see the waves crashing against the breakers that must be navigated on the way to the lighthouse.

This is going to be difficult, but it’s not going to get easier with waiting, so Clint sets off despite his misgivings, Natasha quiet at his side.

They’re past the harbour mouth before Clint plucks up the courage to speak.

“Can I ask you a question?”

The cabin of the Lucky Dog is small, but it’s better than constantly getting sprayed by sea water. Natasha squeezes herself into the space between the steering wheel and the window, bracing herself against the glass.

“Sure.” She catches herself on his forearm as they hit a particularly large swell but rights herself immediately.

“Can you not do this yourself? You must have come to the mainland in some sort of boat.”

He can’t turn to look at her – the sea commands far too much of his attention – but he can feel the weight of her gaze on him. It makes him want to straighten; a strange form of defiance, the purpose of which Clint can’t fathom or guess the real origin of.

“I row across,” Natasha replies eventually. “There’s nowhere to keep a boat on the headland so I have to be able to drag it out of the water myself. It’s not big enough for all the kelp.”

But, Clint thinks, there can’t be anywhere to keep a boat on that rocky islet. He doesn’t say anything though.

They pitch and roll, and Clint wrestles with the wheel, directing Lucky Dog around the dangerous breakwater and into more open waters before turning for the lighthouse. He doesn’t like this storm.

“Hope you’ve secured it well,” Clint grunts as they’re thrown again, Natasha this time bracing against his shoulder.

“It’s also at Odinson’s.”

Clint nods, but he needs all his concentration approaching the lighthouse and conversation trails off. It’s only when the lighthouse is in sight that Clint thinks to ask, “What’s the set up for unloading?”

He doesn’t need to see her to know she’s grimacing, reluctance and contrition rolling off her in equal parts.

“You have to let me off,” she says, and Clint spares a split second to shoot her a deeply sceptical glare. “There’s a winch I can set up – it’s quick, don’t worry. We can unload using that and then you can leave. There’s a buoy you can anchor to.”

Clint casts a worried look at the roiling sky and pitching sea, but decides not to comment. If she were anyone else he would have said something by now, but she’s a lighthouse keeper. The world works differently around keepers. Clint knew this going in, just as he knew today wasn’t really the day to be sailing around the headland. Neither fact stopped him.

Natasha points out the buttress of rock the winch is apparently attached to before leaping from the pitching deck of Lucky Dog and landing – surefooted as a goat – on a slippery spur of rock Clint would swear blind they weren’t close enough to. Once he’s sure that she’s okay, he draws up alongside the buoy and moors Lucky Dog securely, double checking his knots worriedly. The wind is high and he doesn’t want Lucky Dog smashed against the headland because he was sloppy. She deserves better than that. Then he begins attaching the baskets of kelp to the winch line that’s appeared from, he’s fairly sure, absolutely nowhere.

He’s at a lighthouse. Of course it’s going to be uncanny.

“Got it!” Natasha calls over the wind as the last basket lands on the rock. “Thanks so much, you’ve been – ”

Whatever Clint’s been is drowned out by her surprised scream as a squall hits, picking Lucky Dog up and all but throwing her at the rock face. The only thing that saves her – and by extension Clint – is the secure cleat hitch he’d used to tie her to the buoy. There’s a sickening roll and Clint clutches hard at Lucky Dog’s side to stop himself tumbling into the boiling ocean, Natasha suddenly so close he could reach out and touch, so close he can see the whites of her eyes. There’s another lurch and he drops, the sea sucking Lucky Dog back away from the headland. Shit. He has to go. He has to go now.

Lucky Dog rolls again and Clint’s nearly pitched over the side. Over the wind he hears Natasha yell something, but the water is rushing from every side and he can barely see, let alone hear. There’s a crash from the cabin and he almost loses his footing as he heads to the cleat to unmoor Lucky Dog, but she suddenly rolls again and he’s thrown against the side, once again suddenly two feet from where Natasha's still stood on the rock.

“Unmoor and jump!” she yells, and it’s such a stupid, stupid thing to say, let alone do, that Clint’s momentarily frozen in horror. Unmoor Lucky Dog? In this weather?

“Trust me, Clint!” she yells. “Unmoor and jump!”

And, for some absolutely baffling reason, Clint does.

The waves pitch and roll, drawing him back towards the headland and, at the very peak of the swell, just before it breaks, he pulls the cleat hitch hard to unmoor Lucky Dog and jumps off her side towards Natasha. In the strange, slow motion howl that follows, he sends up a prayer to whoever may be listening that Lucky Dog forgives him this utter betrayal after all her years of loyal service.

Then he’s caught in Natasha's arms and pulled away from the edge of the rock, soaking wet and shaking with unspent adrenaline.

But when he turns back to check on Lucky Dog – she deserves to have him at least witness her destruction – he finds the sea empty.

“What?”

“Come on!” Natasha yells, her voice now much closer as she tugs him insistently towards a precarious looking rock-cut stairway that he hadn’t noticed before. He staggers after her, still reeling from the image of that boiling, empty sea, the rubber soles of his waders saving him on slippery rocks despite legs that want to collapse beneath him. He barely registers Natasha hauling open the heavy doors to the lighthouse. In fact, he only begins paying attention to his surroundings again when he stumbles head first into one of the kelp-filled wicker baskets.

In the lighthouse. Where Natasha couldn’t have put them because there was no time.

“What?” Clint manages, and the sudden cessation of sound as Natasha hauls the door closed again means his quiet incomprehension lands in the comparative silence feather light.

There’s a light overhead – not oil or wax or even tallow, but Clint’s trying not to think about that too hard – and the smell of wet kelp is strong in the tiny room. Natasha edges around him warily, like he’s liable to lose it if she moves too fast.

He feels like he might. How is the kelp here? And –

“What happened to Lucky Dog?” Clint asks, tearing his gaze away from the improbable kelp baskets.

Outside the sea beats against the lighthouse, making a muffled, echoing boom. Inside, Natasha breathes out an agitated breath and doesn’t answer.

“Let’s get upstairs, get dry,” she says instead. “The kelp can wait.”

She turns towards ladder Clint hadn’t noticed before, but Clint can’t… He has to know. He’s willing to let a lot of things slide, but this is uncanny in a way he can’t just ignore. And Lucky Dog is his livelihood.

Was. Was his livelihood. He has Delta Blue now, he has a crew and people to rely on and who rely on him. It’s not just him and Lucky Dog anymore.

But still.

“How did the kelp get here, Natasha?” he asks quietly, in that firm voice he rarely uses but always gets him answers. “And what happened to Lucky Dog?”

Natasha's fists open and close and she sighs again before turning back to him.

“I asked the rock to look after the kelp,” she says, like that makes complete sense. “And Lucky Dog is safe.”

“Where is she, Natasha?” Clint feels like he’s unravelling at the seams. His knees feel weak and his hands tingle with unspent adrenaline, anxiety, something. This was just supposed to be a good deed for the local lighthouse keeper. It wasn’t supposed to be this. He’s going to miss the Harvest Festival if this storm keeps up. He’s going to miss Steve’s nine hundred pound tuna and Wanda’s Harvest pies and Darcy’s special colcannon, the one she makes in the big vat with all of Maria’s best cream.

And he’s lost Lucky Dog. All for some kelp and an enigmatic woman with red hair.

Maybe this is why fishermen are superstitious about redheads.

Natasha makes an aborted movement and Clint’s not sure, but he thinks the light flickers in time with it. Then she puts her hand into the pocket in her skirt and draws something out, holding it out to him until he lifts his hand to take it.

It’s Lucky Dog. He’d know her anywhere. Her blue and white paint, chipped and streaked with rust, the missing cleat portside, the fraying, barnacled ropes curled securely aft.

It’s Lucky Dog, but she’s the size of a child’s toy.

“It was the only way I could save her,” Natasha says quietly.

Gently, Clint lifts the trailing line he’d used to moor to the buoy and drops it back onto the deck. He can feel the tiny bumps that indicate barnacles on her hull. He can feel that she’s still wet.

He looks at Lucky Dog, lying on his palm like she’s been abandoned above the tide mark, and all of a sudden his knees give out.

“It’s all right, Clint,” Natasha says softly, catching him around the waist in a surprisingly strong grip. “Let’s go up. You can get out of your waders and we can have something hot and you can meet Aurora, and when the storm passes I’ll put Lucky Dog back where she belongs.”

And as he has nowhere else to go, Clint forces his legs to cooperate and hauls himself unsteadily up the ladder after her.



He’s not sure what he expected of the lighthouse, really. It’s a keeper’s lighthouse, so he supposes somewhere in the back of his head he expected something uncanny, something improbable. But, other than its location, there’s nothing strange about it that Clint can see. The rooms are small – the widest barely eight paces across – and furnished much the same as any house in the town. Yes, the windows are set alarmingly deep into five foot thick walls and the stairs are steep to the point of absurdity – at least where they haven’t been replaced with ladders – but, by and large, it all seems very normal.

Or – well. The lights don’t burn anything that Clint can see and the kitchen table is heavy oak; far too heavy to have been brought here without help. It’s wider than the kitchen door – it’s wider than the main door – and there’s no way it could have been brought up any of the ladders.

But he’s not thinking about any of that right now.

Instead, he watches Lucky Dog bob in a glass bowl on the table as Natasha searches for clothing he can borrow. His wool jumper is soaked through at the neck and sleeves and his trousers are barely fit to be worn under waders, let alone anywhere other people can see them. He’s not sure what she’ll be able to do though; she lives here alone, after all. Clint’s almost worried he’ll end up in skirts.

There’s a thump from the doorway and Clint turns, expecting to see Natasha and instead finding a large brown hare looking at him through amber eyes. He should be surprised, but Clint feels as though his capacity for shock has been exceeded by the events of the day, so he just stares impassively back.

The hare lopes towards him, nose twitching. It sniffs the sole of his boot, does a circle of the chair he’s sitting in, and then sits back to stare at him, one paw raised.

“I see you’ve met Aurora.”

Clint starts, breaking his staring contest with the hare. Natasha has materialised at the door in dry clothes, her waterproofs discarded.

“I found trousers,” she says, handing him some folded clothes. “They might be a little short, but they’re dry.”

He stares at her, at a loss. He feels as though by jumping from the deck of Lucky Dog he’s left everything he understood behind; like he’s woken up on the other side of the sky. There’s a significance to the light, to the boom of the waves against rock.

“There wasn’t supposed to be a storm today,” he says, because he can’t ignore that fact any more.

Something akin to apology flits across her expression. “No, there wasn’t.”

Clint feels the tremor of fear in his bones and tries in vain to push it down. It’s too late to regret his choices now. “Will I be allowed to leave?”

Natasha makes a jerky movement with her hand, as though she wants to reach out and clasp his shoulder but thinks better of it at the last minute.

“Of course you’ll be allowed to leave, Clint,” she says softly, sadness etched into her tone, and once again he thinks that it must be hard, giving so much to people who still mistrust you. Something like guilt curls in his stomach and he cuts his gaze away.

There’s a strange squeak from Aurora, the only warning Clint gets before the hare springs on powerful legs into his lap, propping itself against his chest to push its nose into his face. Its claws slide against his waders and, despite everything, he manages a strangled laugh at the tickle of its whiskers across his face.

“Aurora might object to that though,” Natasha says, attempting to inject levity into her tone. “She seems to have taken a shine to you.”

Aurora lets out another strange squeak before tucking her legs beneath her and curling up on his lap. Clint hadn’t realised before, but hares are surprisingly big; she’s about the size of the cat at The Hope and Anchor and her fur is incredibly soft. He gives her a tentative stroke and she pushes herself further into his lap in response, eyes slitted in apparent pleasure.

It’s not useful though. He’s still in his waders, water pooling by his feet.

“All right then, that’s enough of that.” Natasha lifts Aurora out of Clint’s lap, making her kick comically, legs flailing. “You go get changed and then we’ll…” She casts around, suddenly looking unsure. “I’ll make something to eat and then… would you mind helping me spread the kelp for drying?”

Clint shakes his head.

“All right.” Natasha smiles. “You can leave your stuff to dry on the rack by the tub.”

Clint nods this time and then heads downstairs.



Lunch is thick bread and soup, warm and filling, with Aurora snuffling around his socked feet. Then it’s down a few levels to the drying room where he and Natasha lay the kelp out on racks. He would have thought it too damp and cold out on the headland to have a drying room, but here it is regardless. He doesn’t ask about it, same as he doesn’t ask about the tallow-less lights, and how the kelp got from the winch to the lighthouse, or how Lucky Dog is now the size of a child’s toy.

Instead he keeps his hands busy as he thinks about Natasha talking to Aurora – unconscious, as though she’s used to receiving no reply – and the easy way she moves between the levels, balancing cups of tea and tool boxes on her hips as she navigates steep stairs and steeper ladders.

“It’s for medicine,” she says when he asks about the kelp. “Ginny sells them for me, through Bruce.”

Bruce is the town doctor. Clint’s never lived anywhere with its own doctor before. Nowhere has been safe enough but the lighthouse has made it possible here. Clint didn’t realise Natasha was also the reason for the medicines though. He’d be surprised if anyone past Ginny and Bruce knows that; perhaps Tony, Ginny’s husband, but certainly not the town at large.

The thought makes him uncomfortable. He tries not to let other people’s beliefs influence his own, but everyone’s taught from a very young age to be wary of keepers. And it sinks into you, that idea. He doesn’t want it to be, but it’s scored onto his bones; even his natural curiosity of the red haired woman on the docks was checked by the words lighthouse keeper. And yes, it wasn’t checked for long, but Clint never claimed to be a smart man. But then, has anything bad actually happened? Has his curiosity led him into trouble? He can’t help but feel that it hasn’t. Yes, he’s caught in a lighthouse during a storm but… is that not what lighthouses are for? Keeping people safe from storms? He’s warm, and dry, and well fed, and he trusts Natasha when she says that Lucky Dog is alright and that he can leave when the storm ends.

Perhaps that’s what makes him the most uncomfortable. That, despite a lifetime of learned distrust towards keepers, he can’t help but trust Natasha.

“It’s probably a Mary Day Storm,” Natasha says as Clint stacks the now empty kelp baskets. “I think it will have blown out by tomorrow.”

She’s stood at the bottom of the ladder, tray of empty mugs in her hands and Aurora peering down at her from the trapdoor above. She looks… normal, unthreatening. Like any woman you could meet in town. It’s strange to think she raised a lighthouse from the rock one foggy night seventy years ago.

Clint straightens, forcing his hands not to fidget.

“Thank you,” he says and feels guilt once again suffuse through his blood at Natasha's startled expression. It’s as though she doesn’t expect to be thanked. “You’ve been kind to me,” and to the town, he doesn’t say, “and I haven’t…”

He trails off, staring at her, unsure how to explain his gratitude. He’s thanking her for today, of course he is, but he’s also thanking her for – he’s not sure. For whatever she did for Darcy, for the medicine the town doesn’t even know she makes for them, for the safety the lighthouse provides the fishing boats.

It feels like more than that though. The waves boom against the lighthouse walls and, once again, everything feels significant –

But then Aurora lets out one of those strange squeaks from the trapdoor and the feeling melts away again. Natasha lets out an embarrassed huff of laughter, her face blush-stained in a way that holds Clint’s gaze against his better judgement.

“What’s a keeper for, if not saving people?” she asks and then, before he can form any kind of answer, she continues, “Come on up into the warm. There are some odd jobs you can help with, if you’re all right with that.”

And Clint follows her, upstairs into the warmth, because yes. He’s all right with that.



Evening has fallen and Clint has become so accustomed to the boom of the waves against the lighthouse that he hardly notices it anymore. He did notice when the light came on, throwing out its warning across the violent sea, but even that is now just a background sensation to the steady pull of the needle against the net Clint’s fixing.

He ties off the most recent knot, mustering up the courage to ask the one question he’s wanted to ask her since they met.

“How did you become a keeper?”

He doesn’t look at her when he asks, instead focussing on the tug and twist of the net needle in his hand, but he can feel the contemplative weight of her gaze across his shoulders regardless. He only looks up at the sound of Aurora jumping onto the table and pushing her way into Natasha's space as if in comfort.

Clint doesn’t quite understand Aurora. She’s not like any wild hare he’s ever come across. She’s more in tune with Natasha than any animal Clint’s met before and he has the sneaking suspicion that she doesn’t leave the lighthouse ever. The word ‘familiar’ dances across his mind, but he pushes it away.

Still, her actions make him wonder if he’s overstepped.

“I died,” Natasha says quietly.

Yes. Clint has definitely overstepped. His hands still and his wide eyes meet Natasha's steady gaze.

“I was sixteen summers and had strayed too far. We didn’t realise, because we had a keeper, but the land was in drought beyond our valley. I stumbled across bandits. They wanted me to guide them through the forest so they could raid our food stores but” – Natasha shrugs – “I said no. So they killed me.” Aurora lets out one of her strange squeaks and Natasha runs a hand down her back. “I was left by the river for the crows. I woke up a week later.”

Natasha gives him a smile that suggests an oversimplification somewhere and Clint looks at her in horror.

“That’s how people become keepers?”

He receives a small smile in reply. “Heroic self-sacrifice,” she says.

“How did you end up here then?” he asks eventually.

Natasha shrugs. “People needed me.”

Clint has no idea how to respond to that, none at all. It’s entirely too awful. To become a keeper you have to die doing something good and then you spend the rest of your unnaturally long life looking after people whose response to you falls somewhere between wary and cruel.

He stares at his hands.

“It’s not that bad,” Natasha says gently, reaching out to lay one hand over Clint’s.

“But people are scared of keepers,” Clint forces out. And he’s putting it mildly; Clint knows of villages that have turned on their keepers entirely. Run them out of town, destroyed their properties, even tried to kill them. It’s not common, but everyone can name at least one village where that’s happened.

“We’re made of stronger stuff than people realise,” Natasha says after a long silence. “Plus, not everyone is scared of us. The important people aren’t.”

Clint looks up at her then and finds that she’s already looking back. He opens his mouth, realises he doesn’t know what he wants to say, and closes it again.

Her hand is still covering his.

Then, to his absolutely mortification, Clint yawns, huge and jaw-cracking.

“Sorry,” he manages, pulling his hands from hers to cover his mouth. “I didn’t – sorry.”

“Look at you setting me off.” Natasha laughs through her own yawn. “Let’s have food and then we can – ” She cuts herself off, her eyes widening and her cheeks flushing red.

“What?”

“I – um.” She runs a hand over her face and gives him a deeply embarrassed look. “I just realised. I don’t – have anywhere for you to sleep. Other than…” She waves her hand at the ceiling to indicate her own bedroom and suddenly Clint’s blush equals hers.

Aurora squeaks and scrambles out of Natasha's arms, skittering across the table to push her face into Clint’s. For some reason, this makes Natasha blush more.

“I can… sleep in the armchair?” Clint offers. He’s too tall and he’ll sleep terribly, but he has to offer. “Or the floor. Just give me some blankets.”

Aurora squeaks again, sounding almost angry.

“I… don’t have enough blankets,” Natasha replies, frowning at the hare in Clint’s arms. “It’ll… it’s all right. It’s a Mary Day Storm; it’ll only be for one night. We can share.”

And at that, Aurora burrows deeper into Clint’s arms, apparently content.



The first thing Clint notices is that Natasha's bedroom is by far the most comfortable Clint’s ever seen in his life – which makes sense really, considering it was pulled from thin air. If you’re making your home from scratch, you may as well make it comfortable. The second thing Clint notices is the bed. It’s built into the side of the round room, heavy curtains and heavier wood, looking more like something from one of the royal palaces from the south. And that’s fine – apart from the fact that it’s curved, following the line of the wall. Which means Clint can’t do what he planned, which was to sleep as close to the wall as physically possible, keeping out of Natasha's way to the best of his ability until morning. He can’t do that because he is too tall. Either he’ll spend half the night kicking her, or he has to sleep on the outer edge, boxing Natasha against the wall.

“I’m not…” He trails off. He’s not sure how he was planning to end that sentence even as he was saying it.

Natasha sighs. “This will be far easier if you stop overthinking things.” She crawls under the heavy blankets and into the dark cavern that is her bed, Aurora jumping in after her. “Come on, Clint.”

Warily, Clint climbs in after her. The blankets are wonderfully soft and warm and, once the heavy curtains have been pulled to cover both the window and the side of the bed, it’s completely dark, even the flashing lantern outside blocked out. He could be anywhere. He could be back in his room at The Hope and Anchor. He could be back at the miserable farm he grew up on, where the only good thing was the blaze of stars that bloomed overhead on clear nights.

He shifts, intensely aware of the woman lying mere inches from him.

“Thank you.”

Natasha's voice is soft in the dark and it makes Clint freeze.

“What for?” Clint murmurs after a moment. She has no reason to thank him.

There’s a long silence.

“For being kind,” she says eventually.

Clint doesn’t know what to say to that, but he stares into the blackness above him for a long time thinking about it before he finally drifts off to sleep, Natasha's breathing gentle and even by his side.



Clint wakes in stages, so rested and relaxed he doesn’t want to move. He’s not sure he’s ever slept as well as he did last night. He stretches in the darkness and jumps when something kicks him in the ribs, squeaking at him, and there’s a brief scuffle where he’s completely forgotten he went to bed with a hare last night before Natasha’s voice drifts across the blankets.

“Stop wriggling.”

For a brief moment, Clint forgets he’s sharing a bed with a lighthouse keeper and just luxuriates in the sound of her voice – soft and velvet, muffled by material and sleep – but then he remembers and freezes as though caught doing something wrong. Aurora kicks him again, because of course it was Aurora, and scrambles onto his chest. She pushes her face into his, her twitching whiskers tickling against his chin, and in the dim light that’s fighting its way through the heavy curtains, Clint meets her golden eyes. She might be a hare, but her expression seems knowing.

“Stop it, Aurora.”

Natasha's voice seems stronger now, less muffled, and Clint breaks off his staring contest with her hare to look at her. She’s a riot of red hair half buried under wool and brocade, and all her can see of her is the pale skin of her forehead and cheekbone and one bright green eye. She’s glaring at Aurora, but whatever she’s hoping that to achieve doesn’t materialise because Aurora just presses herself more firmly into Clint’s chest, her nose buried under his chin.

Clint can’t help but laugh – at the tickle of her whiskers, yes, but also just at her. It’s like she knows she’s annoying Natasha and fully intends to keep doing so. It reminds him of his friend from back home or, even more strangely, his brother, on those rare days he wasn’t being terrible.

“She’s all right,” Clint says, laying a hand across Aurora’s back.

Natasha snorts. “You say that now, but you’ll be singing a different tune when she chews through all your socks.”

“Nah,” Clint says with a smile, stroking down her ears and back. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you girl?”

Aurora squeaks and Clint decides to take that as agreement.

“See?” he replies with a sleepy grin. “She likes me.”

Natasha hums, but doesn’t contradict him. Instead she sits up, hair everywhere, and pokes him in the thigh with her toe.

“If you get up now, I’ll make you porridge and kippers before you leave.”

It was a Mary Day Storm; it passed in the night and Clint can tell from the light-lined curtain that the sky outside is now blue and clear. It’ll be easy sailing back to town.

“You have to get out of bed before I can, Clint,” Natasha says, sounding quietly amused.

Clint sighs, exaggeratingly put-upon, and shifts Aurora off his chest before swinging himself out of bed, letting Natasha up in the process. His borrowed night-gown flutters about his legs, too short really, but better than nothing. Natasha hands him a robe.

In the bright morning light the entire lighthouse feels different, though Clint’s not sure if it’s because it is different or if it’s just because… nothing bad happened. Clint spent a night in a lighthouse and nothing bad happened. Any anxiety he had felt yesterday has drained away and all that’s left behind is a strange feeling of vindication, as though some long held and previously unacknowledged belief he’s harboured in the corner of his heart has been validated. Somewhere deep down he always knew it would be all right.

It makes him smile.

“Is it difficult?”

“What?” Natasha looks up from where she’s stirring porridge on the stove and Clint gestures to Lucky Dog, floating in her bowl of water on the table.

“Getting her back; is it difficult?”

“Oh,” Natasha returns her attention to the porridge. “No, not especially. But it’s draining. I wouldn’t have been able to do it yesterday I don’t think.”

Clint nods, idly studying Lucky Dog as she bobs gently in her bowl. She’s a good boat, reliable. Maybe he’ll see if he get give her a good service this winter, get her up to scratch again after all her adventures over the past couple of months. She deserves that.

The porridge, when it arrives, is thick and creamy, the kippers are smoked with something Clint doesn’t recognise but definitely appreciates, and Natasha must have a good in with Miss Maria because the butter is incredible. Clint eats as well, if not better, than he has for years – no disrespect meant to Miss Darcy – and by the time he’s finished, he’s more inclined towards having a nap than sailing back to town.

But it’s the Harvest Festival tonight. It was a Mary Day Storm, so he won’t miss it after all.

His clothes have dried after their soaking the previous morning, but as Clint pulls his waders on just inside the main door of the lighthouse he nonetheless feels uncomfortable. A niggling sensation that he can’t just leave like this, with a full belly and dry clothes, as though that's all the thanks Natasha deserves after saving both his life and his livelihood yesterday. But it’s more than that: he can’t help but think she deserves more for being this town’s lighthouse keeper than the wide berth and distrustful looks most of the townspeople give her. She does so much for them and gets so little in return.

He wants to do something for her. But he himself has barely been in town three months. What can he do?

Natasha’s voice pulls him from his musings.

“Come on. Let’s get Lucky Dog back where she belongs.”

She’s back in her big green oilskin, sou’wester about her neck and big boots on her feet, and holding Lucky Dog carefully in her hand. Once again she looks like any fisherwoman from along the coast, ready to start another day of gutting and drying and pulping and smoking. Only her hair sets her apart, the red of it almost glowing in the bright morning light. The sight of her strikes Clint somewhere in his chest; a twist and lurch he barely recognises, it’s been so long. He swallows it down.

They make the walk back to the landing stage in a companionable silence, the only sounds the scream of the gulls and the lap of the waves and the tramp of their feet. The horizon stretches for miles, empty and blue. No one will be out on the water today, everyone instead getting ready for the night’s festivities; for Miss Darcy’s colcannon and Miss Helen’s harvest loaves and Steve Rogers’ nine-hundred-pound tuna. He's never been to this town’s Harvest Festival before, but the townsfolk speak of it with such anticipation he can’t help but look forward to it.

The thought strikes Clint suddenly; has Natasha ever been to the Harvest Festival of the town she protects?

“Oh good, the buoy has survived.” Once again Natasha’s voice cuts through Clint’s thoughts. “At least that means I don’t have to get that fixed. I hate reattaching buoys.”

“I could do it,” Clint finds himself saying. “I don’t mind.”

The look Natasha throws him is inscrutable, but Clint can deduce fondness, confusion and a sort of tender gratefulness that makes the ache in his chest flare.

“Thank you,” she says after a long moment. “Next time, perhaps.”

And then there’s a shift – in the air or in the sky or just in Clint’s mind, perhaps – and Lucky Dog is once again bobbing on the water, securely tied to the buoy.

Clint stares at her for a moment, before turning to Natasha. “Would you like to come with me to the Harvest Festival?”

Shock wipes Natasha’s face clean of all other emotion.

“It’s just,” Clint flounders before making an incomprehensible gesture with his hand that could mean anything. “I heard Miss Darcy makes a special colcannon.” And then, because he finds he really does want Natasha there with him, he adds, “Please.”

This invitation is unlikely to gain him goodwill, at least from some people – Jack and Alex and the Odinson brother who seems to hate him for reasons Clint can’t fathom – but he thinks that maybe Miss Darcy will be pleased, and Miss Ginny and Rhodes and Bruce the doctor. And Clint would rather have their goodwill than that of Jack and Alex.

He'd rather have Natasha’s goodwill.

“I’ve never been to the Harvest Festival before,” Natasha says, her voice almost lost beneath the sound of the waves but making Clint's heart clench nonetheless. Seventy years. Seventy years and not once has anyone invited her. Not even Rhodes. Not even Miss Darcy.

He doesn’t say anything like that though.

“Neither have I,” he says instead. “We can go together.”

Her answering smile is almost childlike in its tentative delight.

“Let me – ” She turns, hands scrunched tight in the pockets of her oilskin. “This isn’t – I’ll just go and change into something more... Presentable. Don’t – don’t go anywhere.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask where exactly would I go? He can’t even get back into Lucky Dog without Natasha’s help with the winch, but he swallows it down. It’s isn’t the time for jokes like that. Somehow, this is too important.

“I won't.”

Natasha nods once and turns towards the lighthouse, but at the last moment she swings back, stumbling jerkily forward to press the ghost of a kiss against his stubbled jaw.

“Thank you, Clint,” she says, before disappearing up the steps and away.

Clint touches the tips of his rough fingers to his jaw, his skin tingling like he’s been stood too long by a fire.

“You're welcome, Natasha.”