hawks eye
When Clint Barton is sent to execute a Black Widow murdering their agents, he doesn’t expect just how young she is. She barely looks old enough to drink but her frame is stiff and she fights like a caged animal.
Clint has an arrow aimed at her head and he demands to know the why’s of why she killed all those agents. The least he can do is bring home some sort of closure for grieving families of co-workers he once knew in passing.
Instead, the Black Widow grins all teeth, sharp and pointed as she tells him that if he kills her then she’ll be avenged. That one movement and their position would be alerted to her partner.
The more Clint coaxes, the more the woman dances around him in a game he had no interest in playing.
Until she lets it slip (he’ll later realize she never let anything slip, she’s too cautious for that) that her partner is seventeen.
There have never been any reports of a partner, or if there was then Clint was never debriefed about it but Coulson would have told him if he knew.
Clint stares at this woman who can’t be older than twenty-five and thinks about the possible teenager waiting for her to come home at the end of the day.
He takes a risk. He lowers his bow and offers his hand instead.
She turns out to be telling the truth when she leads him back to where she and her partner have been laying low. The girl, who looks much younger than the seventeen the Black Widow claimed her to be, is jumpy and just waits for Clint to so much as breathe wrong so she can pull the trigger.
Clint watches them hold hands on the jet back and he knows that he made the right choice. Even when they’re separated and the teenager pulls a razor blade from her mouth to threaten anyone who comes near her and the Black Widow pulls her close and murmurs softly to her.
Of course, Clint gets a thorough dressing down from Coulson, Hill, AND Fury. Not only was he sent out to assassinate a Black Widow, he brought her and another assassin back to base without authorization.
It isn’t until much later, when things have simmered down and the Black Widow, Natalia, gets back from her first mission that Coulson clasped Clint on the shoulder and tells him that he made the right choice.
Since it was Clint that brought Natalia back instead of killing her, he’s paired up to be her partner. He doesn’t mind. He learns quickly and adjusts to accommodate them into his everyday life.
They become his friends. He’ll never tell them to their face, at least not yet because they’re not ready, but they’re the little sisters he never had.
He will defend them whenever anyone doubts them. When Yelena gets in trouble training with the other recruits and falls into a submissive role and allows her superiors to plow over her, Clint takes things into his own hands.
When his knuckles get scraped from punching the righteous bastard in the face, he proudly displays the tape on his fingers.
Clint has to keep an eye out for them because they will not disobey against orders no matter how wrong they think they are.
Everything gets difficult when their deprogramming starts. Clint isn’t allowed into Yelena’s, which he understands. Natalia and Bobbi are closer to her. Clint instead chooses to guard the door.
He always guards the door to give them privacy.
Natalia asks for him and Maria during her deprogramming. Clint knows that Yelena is disgruntled that Natalia doesn’t want her there but she ends up showing up anyway when Natalia won’t get under control.
They’re just about halfway through the estimated length of Natalia’s deprogramming when she starts screaming for Yelena.
Clint knows that Natalia had made Yelena promise to sleep in that day so he easily finds their bunk and pounds on the door.
When she takes just a little too long to answer, Clint uses the override Natalia gave him on the door, not expecting the situation on the other side of the dor.
Yelena peers up at him with wide eyes, like a deer caught in headlights as her right wrist dangles from the headboard in a handcuff.
Clint has so many questions he wants to ask but Natalia needs Yelena more than Yelena needs an interrogation.
Clint pulls a bobby pin out and unlocks the cuff swiftly but he lets Yelena know that they’re not dropping this topic. He can spot a red mark around Yelena’s wrists as he grabs her hand and tugs her to Natalia.
The next day he takes her to the vents to ask her about it. He didn’t realize just how fiercely she’d react. He underestimated just how much she feared Maria’s reaction if he told her. He thought she’d be open to it because he could have said he’d tell Fury.
Yelena chokes him out with her thighs and threatens him with any trigger he had confessed to her in the past. Clint hadn’t meant to make her feel like she had to resort to such a violent reaction. He just wanted to help her, what she was doing wasn’t healthy and she needed more help than he knew how to give.
She tries to bolt when she lets him go but Clint quickly snags her ankle before she goes to hide and have a meltdown alone. He pulls her back into the vent before she goes and does something she regrets.
He really honestly didn’t mean to make her cry. She curls up into a ball in the corner of the nest and asks for Bobbi.
It turns out that when Yelena told him that Bobbi knew, she wasn’t being entirely truthful. When Yelena’s head is buried into Bobbi’s shoulder, Bobbi told him that Yelena confessed that the marks on her wrists were self-inflicted but they rarely showed up to she didn’t do anything.
Clint feels useless as he watches Bobbi calm the teenager down. He has to admit that Bobbi knew Yelena better than he did.
He also knows that the only reason Bobbi doesn’t kick his ass is that he didn’t mean to upset her. He just wanted to talk with Yelena about the handcuffs and maybe soothe her before they go to Maria.
Instead, Bobbi promises to keep the secret as long as they come up with a solution.
Natalia needs Yelena sooner than Clint can genuinely apologize.
That night, Natalia shows up at Clint’s bunk, using the emergency override he had given her.
Natalia is angry and upset and Clint asks where Yelena was but that only makes her more upset. Clint suggests that they head to the gym to work out whatever was upsetting her and then he has to wrap her hands for her when she tries to punch through the punching bag. It’s only when she depletes what little energy she had left from the deprogramming that she tells Clint he cannot tell anyone about Yelena wearing handcuffs.
“Are you… are you angry with her?” Clint questioned and Natalia levels him with a glare. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She was careless,” Natalia manages to get out through grit teeth and Clint furrows his brow.
“She didn’t mean--” Clint starts to defend Yelena but Natalia cuts him off harshly.
“If you were the Red Room then she’d be dragged to her knees and beat until she couldn’t stand,” Natalia interrupts, her accent becoming thick as she gets upset.
“We’re not the Red Room, Nat,” Clint reminds her softly. “I’m the one that made Yelena tell me about it. I’m the one that caught her.”
Natalia leans her head forward to wearily rest it on the punching bag. “Did you tell the commander?” She asked quietly.
“No. We agreed we wouldn’t… why are you two so concerned about Maria’s reaction, you know she won’t hurt you,” Clint frowns and Natalia was silent for a few moments. He can see the hesitation in her frame so he waits a few moments longer until Natalia lets out a sigh.
“I don’t want them to take her away from me,” Natalia confessed and Clint draws his brow together in confusion.
“Why would they take her away from you?” Clint questioned, reaching out to grab Natalia’s hand when she makes a swing that would break her knuckle. “Nat?”
Natalia looks down at his hand that held hers. “I’m her guardian. If they find out that she’s sleeping with handcuffs then they’ll think-- they’ll think I’m abusing her!” Natalia spits out before ripping her hand away from him.
“Okay, Nat, hey--” Clint can see her getting worked up. “Nobody is taking Yelena from you. Nobody thinks you’re abusing her. You are a really good sister to her.”
Natalia clenches her jaw. “I just yelled at her for getting caught.”
“Because you were scared, right?” Clint tries to grab her hand again and then he notices similar marks on her wrists. He hadn’t seen them before, dismissing them as scars just like on the rest of her body.
“Widow’s don’t get scared,” Natalia snaps at him and Clint sighs.
“Yelena said the same thing,” Clint brushed his thumb over the mark on her wrist. “It’s okay to be scared of losing the person you love, Nat. It’s normal.”
“But sleeping with handcuffs aren’t,” Came Natalia’s quick retort.
“It’s not,” He agrees, peering into her tired face. “It’s not healthy and it hurts you both.”
Natalia’s head jerks up to look at him. “Did Yelena say--”
“It’s not too far of a conclusion to jump to,” Clint said. He may have messed up with Yelena but he wouldn’t with Natalia. “I’m not going to tell Maria without your consent. I’m gonna help you and Bobbi is gonna help Yelena.”
“Why?” Natalia is quick to demand and Clint is quick to remember that nobody did things for free, at least not where the sisters came from.
“Because you’re my friend. My partner. I care about you two,” Clint shifts his hand to Natalia’s shoulder. “And handcuffing yourself every night isn’t healthy.”
Natalia swallows hard and glances down and Clint catches a brief flash of shame that crosses her face. “I know.” She said softly, taking carefully measured breaths. “But they make her feel safe. I can’t-- I can’t take that away from her. She deserves to feel safe.”
“Of course she does,” Clint slowly draws Natalia closer and wraps his arms around her. It’s the first time he’s officially hugged her and not just draped an arm around her shoulders or protected her from an explosion. “But you and I both know this isn’t the way to go about it.”
Natalia gently rests her head against his shoulder. “I left her.” She said quietly. “In our bunk. I yelled at her and I left her.”
Clint knows that yelling is a trigger. Any indication of aggression makes Yelena fear punishment for something she may or may not have done wrong. Even if she’s done nothing, she fears punishment for each raised voice. “Let’s go find her, yeah?”
Natalia pulls away, pulling the wraps from her hands and discarding them as she strides from the gym. Clint follows after her, nearly bumping into her when they reach the bunk the girls shared.
Natalia froze in the doorway and Clint peers over her shoulder to witness the chaos of the room.
Yelena obviously was very upset. Files were strewn about the room, clothing ripped from the dresser and the sheets on the bed were a crumpled heap on the ground. He spots Natalia swallow down a bubble of nausea as her fingers run over a smear of blood left on the wall.
This exact type of meltdown was what Clint had been trying to avoid with Yelena. The room is empty but Clint knows there are only so many places she could go.
The first place they check is Bobbi’s bunk. Bobbi sleepily answers the door, concern on her face when Clint asks if she’s seen Yelena.
“No. But… I didn’t think it was anything big…” Bobbi sighs, running a hand through her hair. “There was a noise disturbance coming from your hall but I thought it was you.” Bobbi admits, glancing at Natalia. “You’ve had a rough day but there was a lot of noise coming from your way. I think they called the Deputy Director?”
“Thanks, Bobs,” Clint smiles slightly but it feels tight on his face as he gives Natalia a small push toward Maria’s office.
He’s halfway through asking Maria about Yelena when he sees the missing teenager laying back on Maria’s couch. Her face is slightly splotchy, indicating that she’d been upset recently. The cat on her chest that Clint remembers the rumors around it being an alien, hisses when they enter. Clint can see Yelena’s knuckles and fingers are littered with bandages from where they are tangled in the cat’s soft fur.
Yelena approaches Natalia and Clint manages to understand enough fragmented Russian to know that Yelena asked Natalia if she was still mad at her.
He glances over at Maria when Natalia leans down to press her forehead against Yelena’s. He wants to give them a moment of privacy because the past month had been hard on both of them with their deprogrammings. It was only a matter of time before one of them exploded and it just happened to be Natalia.
Clint may have messed up regarding the whole handcuff situation but things were going to be okay.
As long as the sisters had each other, they’d be fine.