Chapter 8
It was two weeks before Natasha was allowed out of the medical wing. In that time, he never visited once. Coulson came every day in the afternoon, brought her a new book from the library, asked how she was feeling, and told her to rest up. She wanted to ask about him. She knew he lived—the doctors told her that everyone lived through the mission now that she did—but she did not know why he was not there. She had kicked herself for expecting him to be there, for wanting him to be there, for expecting that anything changed. Of course it hadn’t. It was Clint and he was stubborn and she was stubborn and she had messed up and he had overreacted and her nearly dying was never going to change the string of dominoes that she had, ultimately, pressed into play.
She did not ask Coulson how Clint was. She never once asked. If Coulson looked at her sadly sometimes, she didn’t notice. She did not care to notice.
They released her out of the medical bay though she was still on restricted work duty. The first thing she did was to take a shower. Her stitches were out, though she had a drain placed at one wound, and her hair was knotted and gross. She sighed with relief as she worked the conditioner through the tangles and combed them out. She put on clean clothes that were not hospital clothes, and felt much more like herself. Her body ached, but her mind felt clear. She wandered down the hall toward the general mess and common room that the team used, hoping to find food that wasn’t the medical bay menu of bland, bland, and increasingly bland. She grew up in Russia. If she never ate another potato, she’d be a happy woman.
The room fell silent as she entered. The entire team was there, sitting around a football game, nachos, and beers. Everyone looked at her for a long moment, and then just as she was finding Clint in the crowd, they rose as one unit to hug her and tell her how good she looked. She found his eyes over their shoulders. He remained at the table, standing up instead of slouched against it as he had been, his face pale and his eyes wide. She thanked everyone, and then as she was starting to feel claustrophobic, someone scored a touchdown and everyone’s attention moved back to the television. Grateful, Natasha moved away from Clint’s eyes and the others’ touch to the sink. She rummaged through the mugs to find her favorite and began to fill it with water.
Arms slipped around her middle and a too familiar face buried itself against her neck. Natasha closed her eyes as Clint pressed himself against her and pulled her against him as gently as he could manage. His skin against her skin was damp with tears and his shoulders trembled against her own. Natasha heard the sudden silence in the room but she couldn’t deal with that right now. Hope, warm and vibrant, opened in her chest, bright like stepping into sunshine. She closed her eyes and let her head list slightly to rest against his head. She folded a hand over his hands at her stomach and lifted the other to caress the side of his face.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”
He didn’t answer. He just kept his face hidden against her, held her against him, and cried. She stood there, letting him hold her, and finding that she did want to be held. She did want to hear her own words back at her. She did want to know that his fears would not be her own, and that her fears would not become his. She took a deep breath that shivered on the exhale and she felt his hiccup against her back.
He rested his chin on her shoulder, pulling his face away slightly. His voice, warm and not at all a whisper, slipped through her veins, making her feel alive. “Wherever we go, there we’ll be.”
He had once told her, early after she had turned and come into SHIELD, that she couldn’t keep running from what she had been trained to be. He had said, simply, Wherever you go, there you are. And a few years later, when they found that marital strife was no different on a mission than it was on a base, she had quipped the phrase back at him with different pronouns. He had laughed then.
Now, she didn’t laugh. She only smiled sadly and shrugged. “We haven’t been here for awhile.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, in the quiet room. “For being afraid.”
“I’m sorry for not trusting you,” she whispered back. “Clint.”
“There we’ll be,” he insisted.
In the early hours of the next morning, he knocked on her door. She opened it, surprised, tired, bleary-eyed, confused, and wary. She did not want him there. Not yet. They had too much to work through, too much to talk about, and for god’s sake, she at least wanted to be off base and without a drain between two ribs if—
He was in mission clothes. He looked resigned and regretful. He hefted his bow case up on his shoulder in the dim light and cracked a weary smile. “It never ends.”
She leaned against the doorway. “Where?”
“Venezuela. Then New Mexico. Escorting a scientist home, apparently.” He shrugged. “Don’t know why they need me.”
She did. She knew. He was the best. He was reliable and trustworthy for the exact reasons their marriage failed: he did not trust anyone. It was the same reason they once had her babysit Tony Stark. She was reliable and trustworthy because she would never be conned by the playboy billionaire into trusting him. She was also why their marriage failed. She stepped forward, touched the edges of his black and purple vest, and curled her fingers around the zipper tag. She could feel the edges of his unshaven chin against her forehead.
“Go. I’ll see you in New Mexico,” she said quietly.
“Yeah?” he sounded so plaintive and hopeful, like the Clint she remembered from years ago.
She looked up, smiled back at him. “Yeah.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, chastely and quickly, but enough to promise. She stepped back into her room. “Go.”
He went.
So did she. A mission they suspended years ago in Russia because the trail went cold was green lit again and only she could take the mission. She called Clint who had just arrived in New Mexico. He told her to do what she wanted to do. She accepted the Russian mission.