Chapter 1
The women in Clint Barton’s life each evoked a specific feeling, a set of emotions and instincts and indirect memories.
Laura was home. She was sunrise slipping in the kitchen window during the first cup of coffee in the morning. She was opening the door at the end of a long day to a house full of happy noise. She was Cooper’s first birthday party, and the relief after Lila’s first stomach bug. She was fresh-picked strawberries at the end of spring and the first pumpkin pie of the fall. She was sweet, she was kind, and she brought out the best of everyone she met.
Nat was clarity. She was the pull of a bow string, and the zing of adrenaline when he hit his mark. She was a sharp inhale of fresh air after the rain ends. She was a long motorcycle ride on a coastal highway. She was perching on top of the Empire State building at sunset, with the city thrumming quietly down below. She was she was the blissful kind of achy tired that came after sparring and after lovemaking—with Nat, they were similar enough that it was hard to pinpoint which she reminded him of more.
Bobbi was…well, Bobbi. She was the pit in your stomach before jumping out of a plane. She was air getting kicked out of your lungs. She was a rock in your shoe or an itch on your back that won’t go away. She was the anxiety of running out of arrows mid-mission. She was one of those nightmares where you’re suddenly naked in front of the whole school. She was trying to send an arrow through a flaming hoop to shoot an apple off of a showgirl’s head while swinging upside down from trapeze in a sold-out three-ring circus. But she was also the rush of free-fall, a tiger stalking prey, the pure lusty adrenaline and danger of a fight. She was youth and excitement embodied. Most of all, she scared Clint more than the Chitauri and Ultron combined, and left Clint feeling like chewed gum on the sidewalk after she left. And she always left. And Clint, being Clint, was a glutton for punishment.
So when she appeared on his doorstep a few months after his decision to retire, wearing a pale blue plaid shirt unbuttoned to nearly her navel and pair of dangerously short cutoffs that could barely qualify as pants, Clint’s first instinct was to vomit.
“Hey, Cowboy. My tractor broke down about a mile up the road and I need a big strong man to help me finish the harvest,” she said, in a husky drawl that she’d clearly been practicing. She leaned against the doorframe and twirled the end of her braid at him while he tried in vain to scoop his jaw off the floor.
“What the fu…heck are you doing here?” he caught himself, very aware that Cooper and Lila’s playful shrieks in the next room had gone conspicuously quiet when he answered the door.
“You didn’t call. I missed you. So I did the only logical thing and had a hacker friend find your location. You really should ramp-up your cyber security if you don’t want unexpected visitors. What is this, anyway, some kind of safe house?”
“Well, uh…” he started, and a little scramble of feet and a happy shriek as Natasha chased Cooper and Lila into the room answered the question before he could.
“Oh. That’s news,” she said, scrambling to button her shirt up, a flush of color hitting her cheeks. Natasha snapped to full alert, standing upright and taking a step in front of the kids.
“…Morse? What are you doing here?” she asked, ice in her voice. After SHIELD fell, neither of them had heard from Bobbi, other than rumblings of a tall, dark-haired woman who carried a pair of batons running security in a Hydra lab.
“Uh. I actually don’t know. I’m gonna go now…” she said, backing away, when Lila ran up and tugged on Clint’s hand.
“DAD. I didn’t know you knew Queen Elsa,” she said, in a harsh reprimanding whisper that was uncannily Laura. Clint glanced up at Bobbi. Pale blue eyes, Disney princess features, blue shirt, blonde hair in a long braid tossed over her shoulder…and he laughed. Bobbi froze in her tracks, caught completely off-guard.
“No, Lila, sweetheart, that’s not Queen Elsa. That’s my uh….friend, Bobbi. She is pretty frosty, though,” he explained, and Bobbi shot Clint a look that definitely didn’t help her case.
“Is she an Avenger too?” Lila asked, eyeing Bobbi, unconvinced that the stranger wouldn’t actually shoot ice daggers at them. Bobbi awkwardly shook her head and started to answer, but before she could, Laura came down stairs, fresh out of the bath tub, running a towel through her wet hair.
“Clint, was that Mike at the door? He was supposed to come pick up…oh. Not Mike. Hello. Who are you?” she said, taking a step toward her husband and placing a protective hand on Lila’s shoulder.
“Agent Morse was just leaving.” Natasha growled from behind them, Cooper still clung to her side as she squared her shoulders.
“Agent Morse? As in Bobbi Morse?” Laura asked, eyes darting from Natasha to the strange, Amazonian blonde on her doorstep. If the situation hadn’t been awkward enough before, it was palpable now. Suffocating.
“Guilty as charged,” Bobbi answered, flustered and embarrassed, “I’ll be on my way now, clearly coming here was a huge mistake.”
“Oh, nonsense, come in. I’ve heard enough pieces of stories that I have a million questions for you. Pardon the mess, Nate’s been teething and none of us really have felt like picking up after certain people,” Laura said, shooting Cooper and Lila a look that sent them both off in an awkward shuffle of scooping up toys and clutter. She took Bobbi by the hand and practically dragged her into the kitchen. Bobbi gave Clint a pleading look, and he shrugged, smirking, very pleased with both of his wives for their protective nature.
“Do you think that’s wise? With those Hydra rumors?” Nat asked him once they were out of earshot.
“Bobbi is nothing if not loyal, Nat. She’d never be Hydra. If I recall correctly, that’s why you recruited her.” Natasha scowled, and followed the others into the kitchen.
“So, uhm, Mrs. Barton, how many kids do you have?”
“Oh, please, call me Laura. And just the three. What, Clint hasn’t been sending you all the pictures?” Laura buzzed, pouring coffee, gathering snacks, clearly anxious, but hiding it quite well. So well that anyone short of a super-spy wouldn’t be able to tell—given present company, however, she was completely vulnerable.
“Clint and I haven’t talked in a while. I thought I’d come by and surprise him since it’s been so long. I wasn’t expecting he’d be so…domesticated?”
Laura handed a mug to Bobbi, and set Clint’s down in front of him a little harder than necessary.
“Sorry. That was the wrong word. The Clint Barton I know is very different from the one in this room right now,” Bobbi said, staring into her mug, looking very small.
“Damn straight,” Natasha said under her breath to no one in particular, nonchalantly sipping a mug of tea and leaning on the door frame that separated the kitchen from the living room, where Cooper and Lila were playing video games. Laura lightly smacked her wife on the shoulder.
“We understand Clint is a man of many faces,” Laura said, stealing a sip from Nat’s mug while her own tea steeped. She took a moment to take in Bobbi Morse, who to this point had been a myth. Someone that Clint flew off to periodically, for a few days at a time, and came home from silent, morose, distracted. These forays had been much more frequent when Laura and Clint had first met, and dwindled over the years until finally disappearing all together shortly after Cooper was born. She’d been the great secret, until after years of arm twisting Laura had finally managed to coax a name out of her husband other than “Detroit” or “LA.” Even more years and she managed to get the words “SHIELD Agent” and “first wife” out of him.
And now, here she was, sitting at Laura Barton’s table, intently starting into her cup of coffee. She wasn’t at all what Laura had expected—someone dark and mysterious, deadly, more predator than person, who toyed with men the way a cat might paw at a mouse. But in reality, there was something familiar about her. There was something Laura couldn’t quite pinpoint that reminded her of Steve—something in the space she occupied and way her shoulders squared, even when she was trying to appear small. Something about her face (which looked barely older than Wanda’s) carried a deeper understanding and age she shouldn’t possess. Most of all, something deeply vulnerable that she was trying desperately to conceal, but struggling in the circumstances.
“So uhm, Laura, how long have you two been living out here?” she asked, looking up at Laura, trying to get a read on the situation. Those ice-blue eyes seemed to cut straight to Laura’s core on a glance, which reminded her of a different Avenger, one who was currently fidgeting with a now empty mug and posturing herself very territorially in the doorway.
“This was my grandmother’s farm, actually. It’s been in the family for years, but we took it over just after I got pregnant with Cooper,” Laura said, taking the tea bag out of her mug and taking a seat next to Clint, “Did Clint give you the address?”
“No,” Clint and Bobbi said in unison, both defensive. Clint was wounded, offended even, at the idea that his wife would even suspect him of willingly bringing Bobbi into their space. Bobbi was defensive, echoing the same—she clearly didn’t know before coming that this was a family space.
“No, I had to have a hacker friend trace the last email I got from Clint. It wasn’t an easy place to find, I promise you that,” Bobbi reassured, “I will have her make sure she didn’t leave any holes that might leave you vulnerable.”
“Good,” Natasha grunted. The four sat in silence for a moment, when Nate started crying through the baby monitor. Laura went to go get him.
With Laura gone, Natasha slid into action, grabbing a knife out of the block on the counter and pinning it to Bobbi’s throat in one swift motion that caught Clint off guard. This was a side Natasha had NEVER showed on the farm, especially with the kids in the next room.
“You have exactly sixty seconds to convince me you’re not Hydra before I end you right here, and I promise you that neither of us wants to answer to Laura for killing a spy at her kitchen table,” Natasha snarled, and Clint stood quickly.
“Not Hydra, SHIELD. Went deep cover into Hydra working for SHIELD after the fall,” Bobbi blurted, “I’d never betray SHIELD, you of all people should know that Romanoff.”
“SHIELD died with Fury,” Natasha whispered harshly, pressing the knife a little harder.
“Fury isn’t dead,” Bobbi retorted, “but I don’t work for him, I work for Coulson. Fury gave all his intel to Coulson, appointed him director, then went off grid.”
Natasha and Clint stared at each other briefly. Coulson?
“Oh, yeah, Coulson’s not dead either. Fury brought him back after New York. He doesn’t want either of you to know that for some reason, so you didn’t hear it from me.”
Natasha wasn’t used to missing pieces, and Coulson somehow being alive seemed like a pretty big piece of the puzzle. While it was hard to take Bobbi at face value, it was something that would be too difficult to sell as a lie. Too specific. Clint, equally surprised but less caught off guard, gave his wife a nod. Natasha loosened her stance, and slowly dropped the knife from Bobbi’s throat. The stairs creaked in the next room, and Laura made her way back toward the kitchen.
“This conversation isn’t over,” Natasha whispered through a forced smile, and replaced the knife in the block just before Laura stepped back into the room, Nate whimpering in her arms.
“So, Bobbi, will you be staying for dinner?” Laura asked, and Clint’s eyes went wide and his face went beet red.
“No,” Bobbi and Natasha answered in unison. While they couldn’t be more physically different, in that moment they might as well have been twins. Their eyes narrowed and their bodies tensed identically, and it took everything Laura had not to laugh hysterically.
“You have a type,” she jeered at Clint.
“Do not,” he said, voice muffled as he hid his face in his hands.
“Points for variety though,” Laura continued. It wasn’t often she got the upper hand to tease three super spies at once, “What’s that joke? A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead all walk into a bar…”
Bobbi barked out a laugh, “that joke would be Clint Barton.”
At that, Clint slammed his head down on the kitchen table, and all three women shared a laugh for the first time.