He loves her.
It’s not a thought he is particularly fond of, not when that means his chances of going home to his own family diminish with each passing hour. It’s not a thought he’s particularly fond of, not when his heart jumps into his throat as he sees her plummet off the roof. It’s not a thought he’s particularly fond of, not when he sees her hanging there, and his mind flashes with images of Nat and Lila and Laura before Kate screams, “Pull me up!”
Pull me up!
The words he wished Nat had said to him on Vormir. Not her quiet, “It’s okay.” He still longs to have heard her say, “Pull me up!” because he would have, he would have pulled her up in a second and cut his own line so that he would be the one plummeting to the ground instead of her.
Pull me up!
Except when they come from Kate, even though she’s too much like Nat for his heart to handle, even though his first instinct is to pull her up to assure himself of her safety, he knows that it’s not the safe choice. It’s not the way to protect her. It kills him, it kills him to cut the line holding her off the ground, because it nearly killed him when Nat jumped from the cliff. He wants to help her up. He wants to pull her up and pull her into his arms and reassure himself that she’s safe.
Pull me up!
It’s not safe. It hasn’t been safe. Ever since his past as Ronin came back to haunt him, it hasn’t been safe, and she’s been caught in the middle of it. Twenty-two, eighteen, nine, six, whatever age he gripes on her about, she’s still too young.
Pull me up!
Nat wanted out. Kate wants in.
(Both wanted to help.
Both wanted to save.
Plummeting, dropping, heart-wrenching fear.
Pull me up!
It’s okay.)
He sees her hanging from that wire, hears her voice ring through his hearing aid, and everything in him wants to pull her up. He was there at Vormir. He sees Nat’s face. He wants to pull her up.
A part of him, too, sees Lila’s face. He hears her cry out, and his paternal instincts kick in, both the one to protect and the one to save. They should be the same.
They are not.
Pull me up!
He does the opposite. He lets go.
It’s because he loves her, as much as someone can love a 22 year-old kid that they met on the street three days ago. She’s a fatherless kid looking for a father to love her. She’s an ignored kid hoping for a parent to be there for her. And dammit, he’s the one she’s chosen, and somehow, he can’t reject her. He loves her as much as she loves him.
Pull me up!
He wants to tell her the truth, that he can’t, that he loves her as much as he loves his own kids. He tried to hold her out at arm’s length, tried to avoid the attachment, but he knew from the moment he met her that his relationship with her would follow in the footsteps of his relationship with his kids. He loved her from the moment he met her, and he tried so hard not to love her.
Pull me up!
He yelled at her to get out of Maya’s apartment. He stopped in the middle of a fight with a Black Widow assassin to grab his bow and send her a lifeline. He stepped between her and the assassin, with his heart pounding in his throat, coming to terms with the reality that he would never see his family again.
(And it would be okay this time because he would be dying for someone else. A daughter, a friend, a somehow spitting image of Nat without looking anything like her.
The bullet would travel through his brain, and it would be enough to save Kate.
Let me take her place, and that was all he thought.
Let me take her place.)
He loves her, so he’s more than a little frustrated when she rejoins the fight.
The widow’s bite stings against his neck.
Kate lowers her bow.
It’s all too real.
She looks to him as a father figure, and when he tries to turn her away—for her own safety, might he reiterate—tears fill her eyes. He’s a father. He’s impervious to tears like these.
And he wants to tell her that it’s because he loves her, but she would never believe him.
“I love you.”
Then why are you turning me away?
“I love you.”
Then why can’t I stay?
“I love you.”
Let me help you!
“I love you.”
I chose to be here! Let me be your partner!
“I love you.”
Don’t make me go home!
“I love you.”
Then why won’t you show it?
Everything he tells her is a way for him to say it. A way for him to tell her he loves her while trying to push her back to arm’s length.
She won’t listen.
He takes her bow.
She won’t listen.
She’s hurt, he knows, and she just wants to know that she is loved and cared for. It didn’t take a psychologist to see that her mother didn’t love her, at least not in the way that Kate needed. And if he were her father, Clint would pull her into a hug and say that it was for her own safety, that he had a duty as a father to protect her, and it wasn’t because he loved her any less.
She needed a father. He was taking on that role.
Pull me up!
Kate is not Natasha Romanoff. She is smart and strong and fast, and she knows what to do in a fight, but she is not a spy or an assassin. She’s a college kid who’s exceptional with a bow and arrow. Nat never got the chance to be a kid; Kate wants to throw it away.
Pull me up!
“I won’t.”