A Gift From: michuniverse
Title: shadow of the hawk
A Gift For: geckoholic
Rating: T
Warnings/Choose Not To Warn: graphic violence, alcoholism, gambling
Summary/Prompt Used: five times clint and natasha cross paths, and the one time they finally connect. a noir detective in a sin city, mid-1900s AU
Author's Note: Not sure if it’s OOC, but I sure had fun writing it. It takes place over the span of a couple years, so technically a slow burn. Hope you enjoy!


shadow of the hawk

I

The day he first saw her was a day like any other. He was working a case like any other, something about tailing an unfaithful husband or getting dirt on a political rival, the sort of rubbish he’d started taking after the War. He had just entered a lounge like any other—The Budapest, he’d later learn—but for all its dim lighting, worn barstools, and checkered floors, it was a joint he could’ve reached from a hundred doors in this city.

He had pushed forward to the bartender, who was surprisingly busy with orders on a Thursday afternoon, and asked for his standard drink at these sorts of stake outs.

“A Manhattan,” he said with a slight nod.

“For?”

“Clint.” Clint Barton, private investigator for hire, known around the streets as the Hawkeye. But this gruff bartender with his sharp eyes and Russian accent didn’t need to know that.

“Ah, welcome to The Budapest, Mr. Clint.”

The bartender turned away to address some other customer. There was a larger and larger throng of working men, businessmen, men who should have other duties, but instead chose to gather around the small circular tables of this hole-in-the-wall bar. They twiddled their thumbs, tapped their fingers against the condensation of their drinks.

Clint flagged down the bartender again, this time with more difficulty.

“Mr…?”

“Shostakov.” Definitely Russian then.

“What are all these men—” and here he gestured at the idle, yet expectant crowd, “—here for?”

The bartender raised an eyebrow while tossing the contents of another drink into a tumbler. A few drops spill out, and he wipes them without looking away from Clint’s face.

“Why I’d expect the same thing you’re here for, Mr. Clint.”

“A stiff drink?”

“And some fine entertainment. The best on this side of the city.”

And here he stood a bit taller, pride fortifying his build, and for a moment, Clint got the sense that this man could’ve been a real menace in the streets if he emerged from behind that bar. But then Clint’s drink clunked upon the bar top in front of him, the lights began to dim, and the bartender melted away to take other orders.

The stage burst to life.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for,” said a young man with a flourish of his hands. “Give us a warm welcome for the widow of the North, the fire that burns without flame, the beautiful, talented songstress—Natalie Rushman.”

Then, as the applause echoed and the announcer moved to the piano, a new figure entered from stage left. A woman, a willowy beauty decked in black lace draping on her every curve from her sweetheart neckline down to her leather heels. She wore black gloves, and a black veil, which flowed from a pearl ornament atop her head to stop just short of her crimson lips. Around her neck, auburn tresses curled upon pale smooth shoulders. The locks swayed as she floated towards center stage. And then she stopped, taking the silver microphone in hand.

To say that the singing was mesmerizing is an understatement. Clint forgot his reason for visiting this bar, forgot he wanted to question the owner, a Malina Vostokoff. She must have descended at some point, a shadow on the stairs to watch her best performer, but Clint never noticed. He was too enraptured by Ms. Rushman’s song, a soulful tune about a spider who wove a web for love, but got caught in her own web. It made him almost believe in love again.

Clint tried to find Ms. Rushman afterwards, knocked on the back door to avoid the bartender’s watchful gaze, but the door was locked, and she didn’t emerge for the half hour he loitered in the nearby alleyway. He gave up in the end, called it a day, and went home to meet his usual supper of ennui. The dame was too good to be true anyway.

***
 
II

Clint didn’t think of himself as a gambling man, but the practice was popular among many of his informants, and so his presence was regular in those smoky houses of vice. Among his favorites was the Delta Strikes Club. As the place was located in the cellar of a store next to a laundromat, the fumes generated by the daytime use of the machines lingered around in the evenings. Most men left the place with their coats smelling a bit fresher, and Clint certainly didn’t mind—what with the ash, alcohol, and occasional blood that this wool had seen, he considered it a blessing.

Tonight he was here to meet an old friend to chat about a case that was growing thorns by the minute. It had started with a man who wanted his brother’s death investigated by those more competent than the fuzz, and while Clint had originally been convinced that the original ruling of natural death had been correct, it was starting to get more and more suspicious. For example, he was being tailed, straight to the Delta Strikes Club. It was honestly a bit offensive.

A few steps after he entered the joint, he turned around abruptly, reversing his path to get a sight of the boy tailing him. The slight build that he attributed to youth, however, belonged to a woman. He caught wide green eyes beneath a fringe of auburn hair, tucked away into a cap. Her gait was obscured by good acting, but he recognized the cut of her cheekbones and the hidden grace in her poise.

Clint didn’t think of herself as a gambling man, but he would’ve bet money she was the singer from the lounge.

He turned again, secure in the knowledge that she knew that he knew that she had been tailing him, and tapped on one of the staff to take care of this.

“Say, that boy looks awfully young to be here, doesn’t he?”

But she had caught his intention and already fled. Satisfied, he acquired his chips and moved towards the table Phil Coulson liked best.

“You must really be in some shit if you’ve got the Russians tailing you,” he said as a greeting. Clint dropped into a chair and motioned to be dealt in.

“How do you know it’s the Russians?”

“That’s Natasha Romanoff you just ran off,” he said while raising the bet. Clint peeked at his cards, then called.

“Really? The infamous Black Widow?” Clint maintained his neutral expression, but he felt his heart rate stepping up with each word. “I thought if I ever met her in this town, I’d be dead in a gutter somewhere.”

“Trust me, if she wanted you dead, you would be.” And he punctuated that with a firm nod.

The conversation drifted elsewhere. First a few more pleasantries, and then the dirty details of this murder case that Clint had been puzzling over for the past fortnight. Coulson had always been a reliable wealth of information, one of the few Clint knew from the beginning of his investigative days. This time was no different—a tip to snoop around in the financial details of a guy named Zemo and suddenly Clint had a new lead.

“How’re you going to replace me when I’m gone?” Coulson quipped.

They had moved away from the poker tables, both with just a bit more cash padding their pockets than when they walked in, and were now watching the roulette wheel spin. Or at least Coulson was, and Clint was watching Coulson.

“You decided to take up SHIELD’s offer?”

Coulson glanced at Clint, amused.

“Their name sounds like filth in your mouth. Fury do something to you?”

“No, they just keep bothering me even though I’ve already refused them many times,” Clint waved his hand dismissively. “I just don’t play well with others.”

“Hm. Not everything’s like the War anymore, Clint.” Coulson studied him for a bit, and then cheers erupted as someone won big at the table, and their attention was brought elsewhere.

When Clint arrived home that night, he dumped his fresh-smelling coat into a cluttered armchair. He poured himself a drink, and the whiskey burned, bringing tears to his eyes. It felt apt for a toast mourning Coulson’s departure. Then he drifted to sleep in a haze, dreaming of those bright green eyes, wondering why the Russians were tailing him for a Sokovian case.

***
 
III

He found himself accepting more and more dangerous jobs in the coming months. Maybe he was more jaded, maybe he developed some itch for adventure that needed a bad scratching, or maybe he was just searching for her in the bloodstained streets. If it was the lattermost, he succeeded.

“How oh how was I lucky enough to get two birds attacking one stone.” Clint muttered. “Or something like that.”

He was locked in a three-car chase, purple on black on sleeker black. The Russians and the Sokovians were both on his tail, trying to run him out for the battered briefcase currently sitting in the backseat of his violet Chevy. His windows were all shot out at this point, and though he was an expert marksman, already having taken out two cars of Sokovians, the problem with being a one-man show was that he could only volley back as much as his driving allowed. And his driving did not allow much—they were all barreling down a busy street in broad daylight.

“Careful with the paint job,” Clint groused as a bullet grazed his side door. “I better be getting paid enough to cover these damages.”

He had been hired by an English dame, a Peggy Carter that was looking for some confidential research file on a wartime super soldier project, and though it fell beyond the purvey of just “private investigating,” something about the steel in her eyes made him take the job. The lift seemed simple, just from a scientist spending a couple days in the city for a conference, and sure enough, the acquisition went smoothly.

The issue, of course, were the competitors that caught wind of the prize. Competitors who were, at the moment, sending a continual stream of bullets whizzing towards his tires to try to stop his getaway. He swore as they fell like rain.

“How do you all have so many damn bullets?”

A few seconds later, as Clint swerved around an incoming tram, one of the black cars pulled up in line next to him. With a few quick looks, he could finally make out the Russian team trying to take him out: just two operatives, a gruff driver and one woman with a gun. The latter bore unmistakably auburn hair, tied up in a neat bun around a very focused face.

Romanoff, he thought, and almost as if she could hear his thoughts, she caught his eye through his side mirror. In this moment of distraction, though, the other car fell in line from the left, and Clint found himself sandwiched. He ducked instinctively to dodge incoming bullets. And the bullets came, straight through his car to strike the glass near the Russian driver, then through the glass, and into his head.

A lucky shot for the Sokovians, but not for Romanoff. The car began to swerve, and as she rushed to take the wheel, it crashed into a civilian car at the wrong angle and flipped. The engine burst into flame, and both remaining players braked hastily to avoid getting caught in the accumulating mess.
Clint decided he would charge the cost of his wrecked vehicle to Carter, paint job included. He scrambled out of his car, grabbed the briefcase, and began the portion of the chase on foot by dodging into the nearest alleyway. As he turned out of the daylight, he shot a look back, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when he saw only one body trapped in the flaming car.

“Lord, I am not a praying man, but thank you.”

Then he continued his run into the shadows. That, after all, was where Hawkeye flew best.

***
 
IV

Clint never truly took a day off the job, what with not much else in his life besides the whiskey bottle, bad memories, and a stray dog he occasionally fed pizza, but some days were slower than others. Today was a slow day. The sun refused to emerge from the clouds all morning, then suddenly bursting into radiance around noon. The wind wafted around aimlessly but pleasantly, unlike its usual cutting self. Spring was melding into summer. Clint decided he had the change to go get coffee at Grills’.

Grills, the surprisingly eponymous owner of Grills’, always gave Clint hotcakes on the house whenever he swung by. A couple years back, Clint had taken a standard case from a woman suspecting her husband of infidelity, and while around the same time Grills had been unfairly accused of robbing said husband of his gold wristwatch. Clint then procured said wristwatch from the mistress’s place, thereby saving both the woman from a cheating husband and Grills from a couple months in jail.

“As always, my gratitude,” Grills’ said in a chipper tone. He slid a plate stacked with two hotcakes towards Clint, and in the polished countertop, the reflected plate slid alongside it.

Clint drizzled syrup over the hotcakes and then cut into their fluffiness.

“Your gratitude sure is delicious,” he said cheekily around a mouthful. It was a standard exchange, and Grills chuckled before returning to polishing the countertop.

A few bites in, Clint heard the doorbell ring as another customer stepped in. There weren’t many other people in the diner, just an elderly couple sharing tuna melts in the corner and a gaggle of teenagers playing hooky, so the newcomer had their choice of forest green booths and cherry red barstools. They selected the latter. As they settled down, adjusting their pillbox hat, Clint saw a flash of auburn hair. Gloved hands sat delicately atop the countertop, capable of hailing a waiter and murdering men. For now, they were docile.

Grills headed over with his standard Midwestern hospitality. Clint studied Romanoff over the rim of his mug as he sipped upon now much needed caffeine. He couldn’t hear her voice over the mindless conversation of the teenagers, but the smile she flashed Grills was one of familiarity, and she didn’t need to glance at the menu to order anything. When Grills came over to refill his coffee, Clint looked up.

“Say, you know that woman over there?”

Grills beamed, lifting the coffee pot from the pour. “She’s one of my regulars. I keep chicken Kiev on the menu for her.”

Clint pondered this statement. Perhaps this meeting was truly an innocent coincidence. He watched as she removed the bag from her teacup and replaced its volume with milk.

“Grills, could I convince you to add a dessert to her meal today? On me?”

“Barton, you dog, this is a diner, not a bar,” Grills scolded, but his tone was purely playful.

Clint shrugged going along with the assumption of courtship. Assuming it’s an assumption, that was.

“Well, she’s at this diner, and not a bar, so what’s a man to do?”

Grills pondered, then said, “You do look too dead in the eyes sometimes. Maybe she can do something for you.”

And a few minutes later a slice of apple pie settled in front of Romanoff, oozing warmth and sweetness. She didn’t seem surprised—perhaps she had read Clint’s lips from the conversation earlier—but she also didn’t seem offended, nor overjoyed. She made eye contact with Clint, then nodded once, slowly. Acceptance? Respect? Either way, though she was the one with hot apple pie on her tongue, Clint felt warmth spreading from his face down to his neck. He finished the last dregs of his coffee, then waved goodbye to Grills from across the diner.

Back in the outside world, the sun was still slowly waltzing across the sky, beaming heat every which way. It still wasn’t as warm, however, as what Clint was feeling in his chest.

***
 
V

There were a lot of reasons the Russians could’ve been justifiably upset with Clint. The whole thing with the super soldier files, the latest political scandal that ousted their man inside, the unforgettable Arrow Incident, the not-for-public-consumption dreams that he sometimes had about their prime assassin—their history was starting to tangle worse than the matted fur on that stray he finally let into his apartment.

But it was just his luck that the one time they nab him, it’s for something he didn’t do.

“For the last time, I don’t know,” he said, spitting out more blood. There was now enough caked into his coat that he’d need to get it properly dry cleaned to walk on the streets again. If he ever walked on the streets again.

“Wrong answer,” his interrogator replied, and the grunt who had been roughing him up started approaching him again.

There honestly wasn’t much to do for him until either the Russians came to their senses or he died. The police would hardly be looking for someone who worked half in the shadows, and given that he was currently bound and bruised and lying in the corner of some indeterminable warehouse, the odds of escape did not look good.

After one final blow that felt like a permanent change to the topography of his face, his tormentor backed off and Clint again saw the blurry shadow of interrogator emerge in the dim lamp lighting.

“Let me repeat. You talked to Antonia last, before she disappeared. There is no way you do not know something. So let’s make this easy: tell us what you know.”

Clint had thought about spinning some set of lies to appease them, to buy time, anything so that he can start working away on these restraints at the very least, but he had a feeling that they weren’t really thinking of letting him go after this. He had never actually talked to someone who’d survived being taken by the Russians before, and there were always a preponderance of bodies in the river. Clint Barton may have never gone past high school, but even he could do that math.

“I really don’t know nothing. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

And then Clint tensed up, getting ready for the physical assault to resume, but suddenly a door opened somewhere in the nearby shadows. Auburn stands glittered under the artificial lighting, adding a touch of beauty to this scene of misfortune.

“Дрейков, позволь мне поговорить с ним.”

Clint had heard a lot of Russian refrains in his life, cusses from workers and orders from criminals, but he had never found the language as lovely as he did now. Maybe it was his scrambled brains, but he found the smoke and honey in her voice to be captivating. They were arguing about something, although arguing in the way that the Widow was softly persuading, insisting, and the man in charge was slowly considering, relenting. He heard some snatches in words he understood: careful, lying, the American, devil.

But in the end the Black Widow won, and she eased forward into the light, a very different light than the one she was under when he first saw her, but one she dazzled under nevertheless. Her clothes were hardly suitable for an interrogation, a low cut dress and silk gloves. Coming from a dinner party, perhaps. She crouched down and moved very, very close to Clint’s face, her painted lips inches away from his broken nose. He tried very hard not to snort blood out at this crucial moment.

“Clint Barton, do you know who took Dreykov’s daughter?” she whispered, staring directly into his blackened eyes.

He shook her head, slowly but honestly.

Then she said, “Play along.”

And she grasped the lapels of his coat, picking him half off the ground and shaking him hard. The fluid in his brain sloshed, and he barely held onto the thought that there wasn’t really much to do except play along, but sure, ma’am, whatever floats your boat. Then all at once, the world stopped jostling. She moved away, and he felt a new weight in his coat pocket. He slid his leg against it tentatively—a knife.

She exchanged a few words with the previous interrogator, coating them with disappointment and mild frustration, and the interrogator offered her a sympathetic nod. Then the light no longer held her presence. The door clanked open again, and she left without looking back.

Of course, Clint’s addled brain feels quite glad that she left before he got started with his escape plan. Can’t have a lady dressed that nice seeing carnage and blood, no siree.

***
 
+ I

The lady was seeing a lot of carnage and blood, and so was Clint. It was a standard nighttime chase, with the Russians having stolen a piece of evidence that Clint’s client needed very badly, a set of blueprints to some facility that made a particular kind of chemical…Clint’s brain didn’t really care about the details anymore. He just needed the briefcase back. So much of his life was spent chasing a briefcase, stalking a briefcase, selling a briefcase, whatever the briefcase itself may carry. Right now, he was shooting bullets for the briefcase, and bodies were being maimed for the briefcase. One bloody briefcase, among millions of bloody briefcases.

He slid into an alleyway, and realized he had cornered their last operative, clutching the leather-covered prize. Gun out, he began to back them against the wall. Then he saw who it was.

“Natasha Romanoff,” he said, naming his target, enemy, friend, and desire all at once.

She tilted her chin upwards, confident even in the face of the muzzle.

“Would you really shoot me?” No fake sweetness for her captor.

“I’ve shot dozens of your coworkers, with bullets and arrows both.”

“Ah, that time at the art museum. You are a wonder, Clint Barton.” He saw just the hint of a smile in the shadows, an upturned corner of the mouth.

“I could say the same about you.”

“Well, I suppose it is an honor to die by your bullet then.” She placed the briefcase down, clunk on the grimy alley floor.

“No fighting?” Clint’s arm was steady, but his tone held surprise.

She shrugged as a response. “I am tired.”

And this got Clint to thinking. It’s the sort of thinking that he’d been doing a lot of lately, in the gaps between the fingers of whiskey and the near-death brushes, the sort of thinking that started not exactly when he first met this woman but sometime soon after. It’s the sort of thinking that hovered around the continual slog of aimless jobs, the significant contribution he’s making to the assault and death count in this city, the general lack of hope and joy in anything else in this life besides her. Maybe the dog too, but mostly her.

It’s the sort of thinking that made him lower his gun.

“You’re right. I won’t shoot you. But I will make you an offer.”

She paused for a second, then nodded warily, unsure if this is a trick, but also unsure of what sort of trick he could employ after she already offered her surrender.
“I have friends in the west, California, and they keep offering me a job, a straight job. It’s a good job for my skillset. I bet it would be for yours too. SHIELD, if it sounds familiar.”

“I have heard of them,” she said slowly. “But what if I do not want to use my skillset anymore?”

Clint took a deep breath, then let it out. “Then we could go west anyway, and see what’s for us there. As new people. Together.”

It was now or never. The first of many proposals he’d have for this woman.

“Will you come with me?”

Natasha Romanoff watched this man who she has wondered about for so long, stalked for years, yet knew so little about, watched his hand extend in the alleyway shadows, an American symbol for new beginnings. New beginnings held hope. For a lifetime she had faked hope for others, every week, twice a week in the bar lounge, but maybe it was time she felt it for real. That they felt it for real.

She took his hand.