Chapter 7
Nat woke up with a gasp.
Breathing heavily, she ran a hand through her hair. She didn’t remember what happened in the dream, what part of her past had invaded her subconscious this time. It didn’t matter — she wouldn’t be falling asleep again, not tonight.
She walked out of her room, into the silence of the new Avengers building. She’d already started memorizing the layout, so she turned to her left and made her way to the studio hidden away in the back of the main gym. She’d worried that they might have gotten rid of it, but not only did they keep it, unlike the rest of the building it looked exactly as it had before. Mirrors covered one wall, with Ballet bars lining the other. Shelves stored weights and yoga mats. A giant fan stood in the corner. It gave her a comfort she hadn’t expected, seeing the familiar space where she’d spent so much time over the past five years. Sitting on the floor, she laced up her pointe shoes. She’d discovered them in a box under her bed, and she knew instantly who had found them, the one person who would have recognized them as hers and have wanted to keep them, even if he didn’t think she’d ever come back.
She stretched for about fifteen minutes before she stood up and shook out her limbs. She walked to one side of the room, closed her eyes, and got up on her toes. She spun one, twice, three times, pirouette after pirouette, until she made her way across the floor. Her mind went blank, focused only on the turn, on spotting and keeping her form. She stopped on instinct, inches before she ran into the wall.
“Haven’t seen you do that in a while,” a voice said, and she turned to see Clint standing in the doorway.
“You haven’t been around in a while,” she responded, before realizing the implications, the buried feelings it dragged up to the surface.
“Yeah,” he sighed, “yeah, I know.”
“You wanna have this talk now?”
“Good a time as any, I guess.”
“Alright,” Nat said, crossing her arms, “you wanna explain why you thought going on a killing rampage was the best way to spend the past five years?”
“It wasn’t—“
“Don’t try that with me, Clint. I saw the pictures. I saw everything.” She stepped closer. “How? How could you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. You made the choice over and over again to go after people, kill people, because of some warped feelings of justice. The Clint I know could never do that.”
“The Clint you knew hadn’t lost his entire family in an instant!” He responded, before taking a deep breath. “I lost all of them, Nat. All of them.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“And I just— Everything I did, I did to keep them safe. To protect them. I retired, I buried any evidence of my connection to them, I spent months at a time away from them, and it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.” His voice broke, and Nat repressed the urge to stop now, to protect him from himself, to tell him to shut up and pretend like nothing had changed, like everything was fine.
“None of us were enough,” she said instead.
“I thought I could do what you did,” he continued. “Throw myself into work. Focus on helping people. But every time we followed a lead, went after some asshole or group of assholes, I couldn’t stop thinking that it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that those awful people were still here and my— and they were gone. And I just couldn’t handle it.” He shrugged, “I snapped.”
“You left,” she said, her voice low but strong, and she didn’t know quite where the words were coming from, but once she started she couldn’t stop. “You realize that, right? You went to get your form of justice, and you left us all behind. Left me behind. You think we all weren’t hurting? You think I wasn’t thinking the exact same things on every mission? I know I could never feel the way you do, but I loved those kids.” She started to walk closer to him, her pointe shoes accenting every step. “We all lost people that day, Clint, but then I lost you, too. And unlike the Snap victims, I didn’t think I’d ever get you back.”
“I know,” he said, “and I’m sorry. For all of it. There’s nothing I can do to change it, to go back and fix everything. I wish that I could, more than anything in this world, but I can’t. I knew that a while ago — it’s why it took me so long to stop.”
“So you knew you were wrong?”
“Of course I knew I was wrong,” he said. “I was angry and broken and dumb, and I knew instantly that I couldn’t come back from doing something like that. And I did it anyway. I didn’t care.”
“Why?”
He opened his mouth, but hesitated. She stared at him, eyes asking the question again, before he sighed. “I didn’t think I had anything worth living for. I thought, ‘No one cares if I’m good or bad anymore, so I might as well do the only thing that makes me feel something.’”
“You had me,” she said, reaching for his hand. “You’ve always had me. And you always will.”
“I know. I couldn’t face you, couldn’t bring myself to think of how you’d look at me, so I convinced myself that you didn’t care. That you never cared. And when I saw you again, I was so ashamed, I — I worried that you’d never want to talk to me again. And I knew that I wasn’t worthy of being in your life anymore. That’s why I—“
“That’s why you wanted to be the one to jump off that cliff on Vormir.”
“It’s not the only reason,” he said. “Between me and you? I’d make that choice every time.”
“Clint,” she said, “you found me at my absolute worse, and you saw something in me that I couldn’t see for myself, that I still struggle to see sometimes. There is nothing you could do that would ever make you unworthy of being in my life, of being my best friend.”
He nodded, and she pulled him into a hug. “I really missed you, Nat,” he whispered, “I thought I lost you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she responded. “You’re stuck with me.”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he mumbled, and she smiled.
“I’ll be honest with you, though,” she said into his shoulder, “You really fucked up this time.”
He broke apart and put a hand on his head. “Yeah,” he grumbled, “I know. I — there’s something else I need to tell you.”
The words set off her instincts, and Nat forced her body to calm down, to wait for him to talk before panicking. “What is it?” She asked.
“I lied to you earlier. When I said I’d be staying here for the night.”
“I don’t understand. You did stay for the night.”
“Yeah, and I’ve stayed the night for the past few months.” He said. “After I told Laura what happened while they were snapped, she — she couldn’t look at me. Said she didn’t know who I was anymore.”
“Clint, I—“
“She left me, Nat,” he said. “Everything I did to get her back, and I lost her anyway.”
Nat didn’t say a word, just threw her arms around him and let him cry. He only ever showed this side with her. He always seemed to try to keep himself in one piece around other people, no matter what had happened. She supposed she did the same, but they’d always made an exception for one another. She couldn’t count the amount of times they’d spent in positions like this, after missions or long nights, when holding it in became too unbearable. He cried, and she found herself crying with him.
“She’s right,” he said after a while. “That’s the worst part. She’s absolutely right to leave me. I don’t deserve her anymore.”
“Hey,” Nat said, forcing him to face her. “You did some really bad shit. I won’t sugar coat it. It’s gonna be hard, and you’re gonna have to do a lot of work to earn back people’s trust. But that doesn’t mean you’re unlovable.” She smiled slightly. “You told me that, remember?”
He stood for a moment, not saying a word. Nat thought about everything they’d been through, everything that had happened since they first met. She’d begun to think that if they could make it through this, if they could survive the impossible again, then maybe they’d finally be okay. “Damn,” he said, and she looked up to see a smile on his face, “I was wondering when you got so smart.” She could hear the lightness in his voice, could hear the unspoken thanks in the way he shifted the tone of their conversation. She punched him in the arm and he laughed, the sound a little broken, the tears still flowing, but for an instant he had smiled, and that was enough.