Chapter Text
Stitch Point, Alaska
January, 2014
This was a wild goose chase.
Natasha Romanov had been in enough dicey situations to listen to her instinct when it told her an op was about to go south. And at the moment, her gut told her she was sitting on this damn dogsled for no good reason. Unfortunately, turning around wasn't really a viable option.
She craned her head to look back at the driver, wishing she could have just called for a helicopter or some other modern form of transportation. Her current op floated a little too far into the gray area of official vs. unofficial. Fury wouldn't send her a helo.
As a bonus, the driver felt conversational. He was missing two of his upper teeth and lisped when he talked. "So you know Boris, eh?"
She nodded, and muttered, "Probably not," at the same time, fairly sure the wind would cover her voice. She'd lost the trail in Fairbanks; until some other toothless moron had tried to hit on her in the bar, where she was drowning her failure in terrible whiskey. Just before she considered breaking his hand so he'd go away, the man had mentioned a bartender in the mining town he was from who had brought down a bear with a bow and arrow. Who had showed up eight months ago with a bunch of cash. And his name was Boris.
So now she was on a sled in the wilderness, on the off chance a man who could hide from God himself if he wanted to - and certainly from SHIELD - was asking her to find him, via the most terrible, stupid, ridiculous joke he could think of.
The town came into view and she felt her nose wrinkle. That was not a town. Natasha knew towns. They had streets and multistory buildings. Infrastructure. This looked like an historical reenactment. Or a Hollywood set. If she pushed on one of the store fronts, there was a good chance it would topple. This is where he'd come to be someone else? She was beginning to hope Boris was a large, bearded ex-KGB agent old enough to be her father. They could share a bottle of vodka and some war stories and she could go back to her failure. Otherwise, she might actually have to kill him.
Toothless ran the dogsled right into town, stopping in front of a building labeled simply Saloon. She ignored his offered hand and dug herself out of the blankets and furs she'd buried herself in. She grabbed the strap of her duffle bag and looked up at the wooden sign in dismay. Her driver said something but she ignored it for his own safety, holding out a handful of bills. When he took it, she hitched her bag over her arm and walked forward, pushing the saloon door open with her shoulder.
Please be former KGB.
Inside it was dim and smokey, and smelled like beer and cigarettes. It was full of flannel shirts and furry hats. There was a bear head mounted over the bar. The only person behind it was a satisfyingly gray-haired man. Chairs scraped on the floor, glasses clinked, talking stopped, and every single eye in the room became trained on her.
She unwound the scarf she'd used to protect her mouth from the wind and cold and slipped her sunglasses up. She gave the crowd a very deliberate once over until people began to look away, then walked to the bar. The gray-haired man met her as she took a stool. "Vodka," she said, tugging her gloves off.
The man poured her a rather generous glass out of an unlabeled bottle he pulled from beneath the bar and handed it over. She looked at it for a moment, trying to guess if it was going to be really good, or really bad. That was all you ever got from a bottle like that.
The bartender was watching her intently, which made her suspect bad. She picked up the glass anyway and looked at him. "I'm looking for Boris." She slugged back half the glass in one go and hissed slightly, pleasantly surprised. Now that was vodka.
Nat didn't miss his eyes flicking to something behind her. She turned. . . and there he was. The only person alive who could sneak up on her. His appearance startled her - shaggy hair and in need of a shave, dressed in a t-shirt and a leather apron that had blood all over it.
She'd thought a lot about what she'd say when she saw him. What he might say. It most certainly was not a very casual, "Hey, Nat."
They stared at each other a long moment. He looked braced for something and the longer she looked at him, the tenser he got. Finally, she lifted her glass, tipped back the rest of the vodka and slammed the glass on the bar-top. She looked back at him and arched her brow. "Boris? Really?"
He smiled, and he shrugged. He gestured at the bartender. "Did he give you the good stuff?"
"If you have better than that, I'd like to taste it." She glanced back at the bartender, who refilled her glass. "You're a hard man to find, Barton."
His face changed, and then he stalked around the bar and pulled out the unlabeled bottle out from wherever it lived. "I'll be in the back," he said, and then took the bottle through a door off to the left. She hoped he meant for her to follow, because she sure as hell was.
It was like a meat locker in there - perhaps literally as there was a carcass of something hanging from a hook on the ceiling. He took a swig of the vodka from the bottle, set it down, and picked up a knife from the table. "I figured you would," he said finally.
She watched him warily as he started hacking into the carcass. Butcher and bartender. Add in candle making and he'd be a delightfully fucked up nursery rhyme. "I knew you needed your space," she said. "I sent feelers out now and then, but no bites." She shrugged. "Figured that meant you weren't done yet."
Whatever that carcass was, he was slicing it up not with a butcher knife, but with the one he wore in his boot. The one he'd tried to kill her with on the helicarrier. "So what does he want?"
No need to ask who he was talking about. "Fury didn't send me. Technically, I'm off the reservation. Or on leave. We weren't clear on specifics." She paused, watched him hack off a decent sized slab of mystery meat and found herself seriously considering a few days of vegetarianism. "We got intel I thought you'd like to hear."
He began stacking hunks on the table beside him. "I heard about Asgard bringing its bullshit to Earth, part three. We do have news up here."
She hadn't been entirely sure about that, but it was good to know she could skip some exposition. "Thor's staying on Earth for the foreseeable. He checked in to let us know." She watched the knife go back into the meat and sighed. No way but the hard way, sometimes. "Loki's dead."
The knife stopped moving, but he didn't turn. "Who killed him?"
"When I say this, I really need you to appreciate how much I hate Asgardian naming conventions." No reaction. This was worse than she'd thought. "Apparently, a Dark Elf."
He sighed. "Well," he said finally. "Maybe Stark will stop calling me Legolas."
"I know it's not how you'd have liked it to go down," she said gently. But not too gently. He knew her fake gentle voice when he heard it. "But I thought you'd like to know."
"Days like this I wish I believed in hell." He seemed to contemplate his dead whatever. "That isn't true. I'm 99% sure there's no hell. The 1% isn't much, but it has, on occasion, kept me alive." He said it so casually, as if that would keep her from noticing the confession.
Definitely worse than she'd thought. "Apparently, the Asgardians have one," she offered. "One 'L.' " She drew a little line in the air before folding her hands behind her back. "So there's that." She strolled slowly to the other side of the carcass so she could look at his face. "Not sure how to play this one, Barton," she told him honestly. "You still being someone else? Or are you ready for a friendly face?"
He held her eyes, for long enough she felt the knot in her chest loosen, just a tiny bit. "Have you ever had caribou, Nat?"
*
Stitch Point was south of the arctic circle, well below the timber line. But winter in Alaska was still winter in Alaska; and it was a long, dark winter. Clint hadn't quite gotten used to it. The cold he liked. That was a new thing, a strange gift from Loki. In a way, he supposed it was a scar, just like all the others he'd collected.
It was weird as hell, though. He could see Nat casting glances at the leather jacket he'd tossed on while she bundled herself back into her winter gear. He should probably explain that to her at some point. Maybe later. After dinner.
He did turn the heat in his house up for her. Usually it was at 55 or so - just enough to keep the pipes from freezing. The dial on sixty-eight got him the reward of her taking off her coat, so he could watch her from the doorway as she circled his living room. Casing the room for potential weapons and escape spots, no doubt. Perhaps looking for clues about its occupant.
Whatever it was, she was moving slowly and pretending not to pay attention to him. Almost certainly wondering what he was thinking about. He wished it was something worthy of her concern, but, as she had not relinquished her title as the most beautiful woman who'd ever graced the face of the planet, he was perfectly content to stand there and stare.
Yep. You've come all this way to have a serious conversation with me about why I've gone AWOL, and I'd rather stand here and imagine you naked. It was nice she couldn't actually read his mind. That train of thought was as pointless as it had always been.
He sighed and pushed off the doorway. "Let me go grab some wood and get a fire going."
She nodded and picked up the bag, heading unerringly towards his spare room. Because she was Nat, and she knew him better than anyone, and she knew his bedroom would be the one farthest from the front door. She stopped halfway there, as if remembering her manners, and turned back to him. "Guest room?" she asked with feigned innocence.
He held out his hand. "All yours. It's a flip-and-fuck." He paused, and felt compelled to add, "Not that anyone's fucked on it."
Her face went deadly serious. "Are you sure? Was it bought new? I'm not sleeping on a second hand frat boy fold out, am I, Barton?"
That made him smile. "Came sealed in plastic. Real mattresses are expensive as hell to get up here." I have one. If you'd care to join. "Going to deal with the fire," he said, and left her to settle in.
What in hell was wrong with him? He'd had a lid on this for years. Live alone in the snow for eight months and suddenly. . . He shook his head, wishing the cold felt more bracing than it did. He loaded a couple of logs in his arms and made a note that he needed to split some more soon, especially if she was going to stick around. She was nowhere to be seen when he got back inside, so he set about building the fire.
She reappeared once he'd gotten it blazing. She was wearing a new outfit, black jeans and a soft grey t-shirt. He was fairly sure she owned clothes that weren't black, white, grey, or red. He'd seen blue occasionally. There had been a pink blouse once, but it had been during a mission and probably didn't count. It was usually just those four, though. The neutrals were for camouflage. The red was just an affectation.
She stood next to him and held her hands out to the fire. "Why here?"
"It's a mining town." He stood, making his way over to the leather couch and sinking into it. "There was a certain job profile I was bouncing around in. Oil fields, gas fracking, that sort of thing. Harsh conditions, isolated area, high turnover, physical strength more important than background. Not a lot of questions. Thought I'd try mining. Then the owner of the bar couldn't handle the midnight sun. Sold it to me for piss change. So here I stayed. I built a still."
"That was some good vodka," she admitted, still staring into the fire. Silence stretched between them. Most of their relationship was forged in silence. They both tended to live there, in the pause between breaths. It was when the silences had become unbearable that he'd known he had to go. "You out for good?" Nat did not believe in polite small talk.
He wished he knew. "If I say yes, will I never see you again?"
Her shoulders tightened, then relaxed. She half turned, the fire painting her in harsh light and dark shadow. She studied him a moment, then the corner of her mouth tilted up, ever so slightly. "Of course not. How would I convince you to change your mind?"
That made him smile. God, how he'd missed her. He'd made a systematic effort to remove from his life anything worth caring about. Anything he couldn't just walk away from. He'd done it long ago and for very good reasons. Everything and everyone were kept on the other side of the line, just in case. The only person who wouldn't stay there was her. She'd have found him on the moon. "You could sell ice to Eskimos." He paused. "You know, I know some now, if you ever wanted to try that."
"I'll keep it in mind." She turned to face him fully and spread her hands. "So. Caribou. That's like ugly venison?"
"Mostly. And I should get it cooking." He stood up, and then turned back halfway to the kitchen. "Natasha."
She'd gone back to the fire, but turned at her name and arched a brow. There were a hundred things he wanted to say but couldn't. So he settled on, "Thank you for coming here."
Her mouth tipped up again, into her honest smile. "Thanks for being here."