Work Text:
↣ 1 ↢
The death of Natasha Romanoff goes unannounced for three days straight.
Natasha has always been one of the more mundane Avengers. She’s not as charming as Captain America or as flashy as Iron Man, the soft fricative syllables of her name but a front to disguise her true, guttural self.
Kate Bishop supposes her relative anonymity is why no one suspects a thing when not a peep is heard from her after the Avengers save half the world. After all, she disappeared off the face of the planet after the mess that was the fall of SHIELD. Wouldn’t be particularly hard for her to do it again.
Still, through her countless hairstyle changes, one thing remains constant about her: she always comes back when the world needs her help.
In the end, it’s the General of Wakanda’s Dora Milaje who delivers the news with downcast eyes on a public broadcast. Kate watches it on the TV with Greer and Fanny, the three of them sitting in shocked silence on the couch of their dorm.
“Damn,” says Greer. “That really sucks. I mean, I know she did some questionable stuff, but she really was a good woman, I think.”
“I’m sorry, Kate,” says Fanny softly, watching Kate’s face. “I know you really looked up to her. Maybe not as much as the arrow guy, but…”
“Yeah,” Kate breathes. “Her and Clint… they’re reminders to us of what we can be too. Heroes.”
Abruptly she gets up to pour herself a drink. Natasha’s death explains why Clint hasn’t been heard from, either. The two were best friends. She doesn’t know him, but she’s always felt like she does, and she hopes that wherever he is, whatever he’s feeling, he’s taking care of himself.
Another three days later, paparazzi pictures taken of Clint Barton lining up to board a flight from New York to Missouri are posted on the Internet. He has no baggage except for a single duffle bag, is wearing a grey zip-up hoodie, his eyes are bloodshot, and he looks extremely, incredibly, painfully alone.
↣ 2 ↢
“It’s just not a good story, okay?” says Clint forcefully, and Kate’s finally prepared to drop it, but he continues on without any further pestering. “It’s… about the time I met someone. I was sent to take her out. And when I got there, when it was time… I couldn’t do it.”
Kate nods, starting to have an inkling of the direction this conversation is headed into. She didn’t know Natasha was supposed to be killed, though considering her track record, it’s not too surprising either. She didn’t know Clint was sent after her. Even now, she can’t imagine the two ever fighting against each other. They’ve always been on the same side, even during the whole Sokovia Accords disaster.
“I just had this feeling that she wanted out,” Clint says, his eyes not looking at Kate, faraway. “Turns out, I was right.”
“You mean Natasha,” says Kate tentatively.
Clint’s nodding before she even finishes the sentence. Kate wonders if that was what Natasha meant to him once: a partner he understood so well that she didn’t even need to speak her mind for him to grasp it.
“Yeah.” Clint looks away once again, around at Kate’s apartment, anywhere but Kate’s eyes. “She was the best there was.”
Kate doesn’t really know what to do or say. The grief from losing her father still tears its own stitches apart every time she isn’t careful and thinks too hard about him, and she didn’t even know her own dad for as long as Clint knew Natasha. It must really fucking suck, and so she settles with a feeble, “I’m sorry,” knowing it won’t be enough, knowing it never will be.
Clint accompanied Natasha right to the very end. So he was the one to give her a second chance at the very start. Stranger things have happened.
↣ 3 ↢
“I’m really sorry about—um…” Kate stops herself from finishing her sentence, scared she could offend Clint with just a mention of her name. “Please tell me if there’s anything I can do to make it better. Anything.”
Clint shakes his head. “It’s fine, kid; don’t worry about it. It was always going to happen. This Christmas was just her last straw, I guess.”
“You’re my partner, Clint,” Kate chances. “You’re my friend. I want to help. So if you want to stay in New York for the rest of the year, or, really, for however long you want, you’re welcome to stay in the penthouse, since nobody’s there except for me and Jack anymore. Or I’ll set you up with your own place. I just thought that maybe you’d do well with the company. And if you do get your own place, Lucky and I will visit every day.”
Clint shakes his head again. “No. I still have to get to the Midwest. For one, I gotta pack my stuff. And also—it’s not just them who are there. I also—I also gotta see Natasha.”
“Natasha? As in Romanoff, Natasha?” Kate asks just to be sure, but the way Clint’s entire body droops just talking about her is an indicator clear enough. “Is her, um… is she buried there?”
“I wish,” says Clint, “because that would mean we had a body to bury at all.”
Kate is silent for a few moments before she stands, laying her hand over Clint’s for a short second before making her way up the stairs. “I guess I’ll start packing, then.”
Clint frowns, twisting his body to look at her. “For what? Where you going?”
“The Midwest, Clint,” she smiles and disappears into her room.
↣ 4 ↢
Kate takes it upon herself to help Clint pack after she’s done with her own stuff. “Don’t s’pose you’ll need this?” She says, holding up his quiver of arrows for him to see.
“I hope not,” Clint says before going back to sorting out his pile of clothes. “Hell, pack it anyway. You never know.”
Kate moves to attempt to stuff it into his open suitcase, but something on the bottom of the quiver catches her eye, a few words printed under the SHIELD logo.
“What’s STRIKE Team Delta?” she asks aloud, tilting the quiver so Clint can see the text she’s looking at.
PROPERTY OF STRIKE TEAM: DELTA
Clint straightens up and exhales.
“You don’t have to tell me if it’s classified,” Kate backtracks.
“All of that shit’s been on the Internet since 2014,” Clint shrugs, and oh, right, Kate forgot about that. She was only twelve or thirteen during the HYDRA Uprising and didn’t see the point in scouring all the boring-looking PDF files Natasha had released when the important stuff was going to end up on Twitter anyway.
“You were in a STRIKE team?” she asks curiously.
“Not just any STRIKE team,” Clint says with a hint of pride in his voice. “Delta had the highest success rate in SHIELD. We were Fury’s favourites, even though he was too proud to admit it. At the time, we were even two of SHIELD’s youngest field agents.”
“Two?” Kate repeats, wondering if she heard him wrong. “The best STRIKE team in SHIELD was comprised of two agents?”
“Not just any two agents,” Clint smiles. “Plus, Natasha and I always considered our handler the honourary third member, even if his name wasn’t on the official papers.” He looks down then. “But of course, they’re both gone now.”
“I’m sorry, Clint.”
He shrugs. “Game of managing loss, right?”
“Right.”
Clint shakes his head. “You should’ve seen us in action, Kate. Natasha was glorious in the field. Fighting alongside her was the easiest thing I ever did. I actually don’t think anyone will ever mean to me what she meant to me. She was the kind of person you only come across once in a lifetime.” He puts his hand on Kate’s shoulder. “As are you, kid.”
Kate stands rooted to her spot on the floor even as Clint moves on with his packing, and the true reason Clint was so reluctant to accept her as his partner slowly dawns on her.
↣ 5 ↢
The Barton household owns the full James Bond DVD collection, all twenty-seven of the films. Clint decides the whole thing would be too much work to haul back to New York and instead picks out Moonraker and nothing else, stuffing the single DVD into his backpack. Kate is curious.
“Nat’s favourite,” Clint says by way of explanation. “Hey, Laura said I could have the coffee machine. Could you put it in the Clint box?”
“On it.”
↣ +1 ↢
By January 1st, all the paperwork has been filed. Clint never used to wear his ring anyway, but Kate can sense a weight lifted off his shoulders all the same. He is, for the first time since his days in the circus, a free man.
Clint drives until they reach a beautiful little cemetery in the countryside and stops the car slowly. Kate watches him look out the window of the driver’s seat at the white scenery for a still moment before he opens the door and heads out without a word.
“Come on, Lucky,” mutters Kate, and she opens the door on her side of the car too, tugging Lucky out by his leash and holding the bouquet of flowers she bought in her other hand.
Natasha’s headstone is situated at the foot of two trees. By now, Kate knows there’s no body underneath it, but it’s surrounded by flowers, candles, photos of the people she never knew but died to bring back. Kate debates adding her bouquet to the pile, but something prompts her to hold onto it for just a little longer.
Clint is kneeling on the snow, eyes fixed on the inscription that reads DAUGHTER, SISTER, AVENGER. The hourglass symbol she used to wear on her waist is etched under Natasha’s name. Clint reaches out and traces the N with his left thumb.
“You were in love with her,” says Kate.
“Madly,” Clint says.
“You should tell her.”
He shakes his head. “It’s too late now.”
Kate holds out the flowers she’s been holding. “Is it?”
Clint stares at the bouquet for a few seconds before accepting it. He holds it out towards the headstone, as if Natasha’s going to walk out from the trees and take it from him.
“Miss you so much, Nat,” he finally starts, already almost choking on it. “And I’m sorry for everything. I love you, Tasha, but you should know by now. Happy New Year.”
Clint places the bouquet on the ground. When he stands up, Kate’s eyes are wet too. On an impulse, she reaches out and brushes the layer of accumulated snow off the top of the stone. The cold stings her fingers and Clint must know, because he holds her wrist to keep her from moving when she’s only halfway through.
“It’s okay,” he says, and the two of them watch on motionlessly as more snow falls from the sky and ruins Kate’s efforts all over again.
On the walk back up to the car, Clint tells Kate, “You remind me of her, you know.”
“I know,” Kate exhales, watching it transform into a white puff of air that she walks through. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no,” says Clint, shaking his head. “It’s a good thing. She would’ve really liked you, I think.”
Kate smiles, looking up at him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He pulls her into his side with an arm around her shoulder. It’s still snowing and the air is freezing, but between the two of them they’ve got a promise of a future to build together, and if that doesn’t warm Kate up, she doesn’t know what will.