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He fought because it was all he had ever known. But now the war was over, or at least that’s what they told him, it never felt true.
He went home and tried to fall back into his routine, tried to lose himself in his children’s laughter but it echoed emptily across the old house. Five years, for them it had been five seconds.
So many people had died.
Most of them came back.
Not all of them.
The news was playing plenty of old clips for the returning population, mixed in with them was the new. Headlines saying things like “Tony Stark: Playboy to Saviour” and “Iron Man Saves us All!” everything in shades of red and gold.
No one even remembered her name.
She had tried so hard and fought for so long, and had made the same choice as Tony. Measured her life against billions and known which weighed heavier, but she’d never exactly considered her life to have much weight in the first place.
She’d died for them too and it seemed like he was the only one who cared.
It should’ve been him.
He did fall back into his routine, eventually. Parent-teacher conferences, family game nights, cooking dinner, fighting, restless nights, always being tired. Exhaustion had settled in his bones, as bittersweet as sorrow. He had one family back, but he’d lost another.
A soul for a soul.
He loved Laura, he really did, but she would never understand his pain. She’d grown up in a loving family, two parents, a brother and a sister, and a college degree in English. Nothing like his shattered memories of alcohol and fear and pain, so much pain.
He’d been fifteen when he’d first killed someone, his parents were newly dead and yeah, it probably made him a bad person but he didn’t miss them. He had slid into a crappy bar with his hood pulled up to hide his bruised face and charred hair. The group of men were middle-aged, drunk but not enough to make them slow.
He tried to ignore them, at first. But after a minute their catcalls turned into jeering insults. He’d heard of fight or flight instincts and he didn’t think he had the latter. All he knew was how to fight. Maybe spending fifteen years surrounded by rage hadn’t taught him as much about avoiding dangerous situations as he’d thought.
In the end, his ribs were broken and his ankle sprained and he wasn’t fast enough, when the first man pushed him against the brick wall outside the building he’d stuck his hand straight down Clint’s pants.
The three of them had taken turns and slowly his tears washed away the ashes from the burned circus tent, everything he had left was gone.
When they were finished they just dropped him on the ground, pain washed through him like fire, bright and burning away any lingering traces of softness from his heart.
As soon as his hands were free he grabbed at the swiss army knife tucked in his shoe and slammed it into one of the men's throats, jeering laughter turned to wet sucking noises and the blood had spread across the dusty ground and soaked his shoes. It wasn’t self-defense, it was revenge and he thinks, even then, he knew that.
He couldn’t remember the man’s face, but he would remember how they felt touching him for the rest of his life.
He built blanket forts with Nathaniel and the two of them had tea parties tucked away behind soft layers of protection. His son would recount every little detail of his day, from the annoying comment Lila had made at lunch to the dead spider that he’d found in his room.
His son was eight and he planned a funeral for a spider. Tucked away in a little cardboard jewelry box amidst flower petals. Clint had cried despite his efforts not to, and if Cooper and Laura gave him pitying looks he ignored it. He didn’t sleep for three days.
The fucking spider had gotten a funeral amidst rose petals, Natasha had gotten a memorial because her body was laying at the bottom of a cliff on another planet broken and bloodied.
It was just a fucking spider.
When he was nineteen he’d joined S.H.I.E.L.D he’d already made quite the reputation for himself. A sarcastic teenager that was somehow better at what he did after basic training than the agents who had been working there for a decade.
It hadn’t been a smooth transition but after meeting Phil he managed to chip away a little place for himself there.
It might have been only a small room, standard-issue but it was his. And so he learned how to fight, and win. And perhaps the thing he was most known for was his eyesight, coining him the nickname “Hawkeye” and a reputation, he was the kid who never missed.
And he never had, not even the first time he picked up a bow.
Now he’s standing in his yard watching his daughter shoot, she begs him to join and he feels so guilty because he really was ready to leave her. So he goes and takes the familiar curved metal into his hands, turns it over, once, then twice.
He hasn’t touched it since Vormir.
He notches the arrow and pulls back the string, his eyesight is blurred as he situates his feet. He’s alright, fine, he's going to be fine. He… his breath comes out choked and hitches in his throat. He’d been aiming for the ground when he tried to stop her, if he’d aimed three inches to the left she would still be here.
He focuses on the target, it’s not even far away, he can do this, he can…
As he flexes his fingers his sleeve rolls up a bit and he can see the thin spider tattooed across his wrist in black with accents of red, his fingers tremble and he misses. For the first time in his life, he misses the goddamn target.
And he can’t bring himself to care.
He met her when he was twenty-three, positioned on an odd balcony above a huge ballroom, dressed in typical mission gear and tucked away in the shadows, worn leather and tight black rayon stretched across his skin.
He had his eye on his target, a man wearing a glaringly obvious yellow suit, and honestly what had the man been thinking? He looked like a banana, he thought laughing to himself. He couldn’t help but think of the kid's show that had come on in Coulson’s room a month ago, the one with the monkey.
It was a funny show, he’d liked it. Coulson had laughed a bit but he hadn’t made fun of him, at least not too badly. It was probably because, out of everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D Coulson and Fury were the only ones who had read his file, and he knew his childhood was horrific without reading the biography, he’d lived it. But Coulson had stopped making fun of him when he got excited about things like chocolate pudding and Curious George because he understood that Clint had never had that before.
And it didn’t really matter to anyone as long as he still went out and fought and won at the end of the day.
His shot was already lined up when the man crumpled. His surprise lasted a split second before he started assessing the situation. Coulson was instantly rattling off instructions and questions but he just pulled the earpiece out of his ear as soon as his eyes caught the glint of metal, a small syringe that seemed to disappear into her tiny pale hand.
And Jesus she was beautiful, danger and predatory grace and curling red hair the color of blood. Every line of her body was curvy with toned muscles and her black dress clung to her like a second skin.
But it was her eyes that really drew him in, a stunning green color he’d never seen before and hard as emeralds. Only there was something about them, something cracked and broken like he could see her through the fractures.
So many times he’d looked like that, reflected in grimy glass, and usually, there hadn’t been anyone to pull him back from the edge.
She was younger than him but she had that look that he recognized in himself, of feeling like you are a thousand years old with the world on your shoulders.
He had to help her, so many times he had needed someone and there had been no one in sight. But he could be that for her, he had to.
Cooper is also too old for his age, he helps his mother cook and clean and he plays with his siblings. Whenever conflict arises his eyes fall to the floor and he shrugs his shoulders and lets everyone else have what he wants, every single time.
Clint sees so much in Cooper, so much innocence and kindness and everything he might have had a chance to be if someone had loved him.
When Lila asks where her Auntie Nat is it’s Cooper who tells her that Natasha isn’t coming back. Cooper is the one who strokes her hair and wipes away her tears. Cooper is the one to answer Nathaniel when he asks why Daddy is so different now, why he doesn’t smile anymore. Cooper just scoops his brother up and says that Daddy loved Auntie Nat very much and he just misses her.
When his siblings run off to play, Cooper's face collapses into such deep sadness that Clint wants to hold his son in his arms, but he can’t move, is paralyzed by his son’s words. As usual, Cooper is right, he loved Nat so much, more than he ever thought he could love anyone, and it doesn’t matter how much he loved her, he misses her even more.
A week later Laura comes in with a surprise, she wants to take the family on a weekend vacation to the city. Cooper smiles lightly and says that it would be good to get away from the house for a couple of days.
When Laura brings up the option of going to a play or a ballet Lila and Nathaniel are instantly begging to see The Lion King, every waking moment they’re climbing all over Laura and there’s more laughter in the house than there’s been in a long time. Clint almost smiles when he sees them like that but then he blinks and all he can remember is that Natasha’s not there to laugh with him.
Cooper wants to go to the ballet, he hovers around Laura’s shoulder for several minutes opening and closing his mouth without saying anything, finally, he opens his mouth “Maybe we could go to the ballet? It might be cool to see something different and…” Nate and Lila are shaking their heads before he even finishes his sentence “ballet is boring, we want to see the Lion King!” Nate says excitedly.
To be honest Clint was surprised Cooper managed to say anything at all. He’s even more surprised when his eldest son visibly steels himself before pulling out his last card “Auntie Nat loved ballet.” His voice is nearly a whisper. Lila cocks her head to the side like she’s thinking “Nah I wanted to see The Lion King.”
The tension disappears from Cooper's body and he slumps over a little bit, leaning forward and propping his elbows up in the counter. “If that’s what you want,” he says quietly but his siblings don’t hear, already skipping out of the room.
Laura lays a hand on his back with a quick pat and thanks him for making things simple.
A half an hour later Clint goes up to Cooper's room to find his son hunched over on his bed crying silently, he’s holding a faded pink ballet slipper. That ballet meant everything to Cooper and he gave it up so quickly, too quickly.
His son, who has such a gentle heart that he can’t bear to say no, feels guilty for wanting anything for himself. Cooper shouldn’t have to feel this way and Clint wishes he didn’t, but he can’t fix it any more than he could fix Natasha’s conviction that she was disposable.
Cooper doesn’t know how to fight and Clint doesn’t know how to stop.
By the time he’s twenty-five, he and Natasha are inseparable. They eat together and fight together, and after a while, they even sleep together, convinced that if he holds her tight enough he can protect them both from their demons, and when that doesn’t work he holds her hands so she doesn’t scratch herself until she bleeds, and she bandages his knuckles when he can’t stop splitting them open against the wall.
Sometimes on quiet nights, she lets him braid her hair in elaborate styles that he learned when he was with the circus before everything fell apart. Sometimes she dances for him, always with slight embarrassment and a good deal of horrifyingly creative threats that he knows she’d follow through on should he ever tell anyone.
But it makes them smile.
When Natasha finds out about his hearing aids, one of his deepest secrets, her only response is to learn sign language. In return, he learns Russian, and the heavy warmth in her voice when she speaks her mother tongue makes him feel like he did something right for once in his goddamn life.
After a couple of months, they start running all of their Ops. together and for the first time in his life when they get back they pick the pieces up together too.
They get matching tattoos after a mission to Budapest, one that goes horribly wrong and leaves him haunted by how close he came to losing her. He’s never felt that way about himself but he feels it so intensely for her that he wakes up screaming for weeks.
Surprisingly the tattoos are her idea and not something he cons her into after she has consumed an unthinkable amount of vodka. When they get to the hole in the wall tattoo parlor Natasha lets her sunglasses slide down her nose just enough to shoot the stunned owner an unimpressed look before tossing a couple of hundred dollars at the guy like it’s nothing.
When he stands there staring a bit too long Natasha whips off her sunglasses and flips her long red hair over her shoulder “Was that not enough money?” she asks, accent thick, and the man just shakes his head dumbly before leading them to the back of the parlor.
The two of them choose their designs, Clint has the man ink a spider on the inside of his wrist, small and black with a red hourglass-like shape in the middle and red accents that Natasha insisted on around its legs.
When it’s time for the man to start Natasha’s he glances over her petite figure and pale unmarked skin before raising an eyebrow “This might hurt a bit.” he warns and Clint can still remember the unimpressed look Natasha sent him before responding with a simple “I think I’ll manage.”
The man was surprised when Natasha seemed almost indifferent to the needle repeatedly stabbing into her skin. But in the end, her tattoo turned out as well as his. A thin and stylized black arrow done along the outside of her wrist, the design has purple highlights that Clint insisted on since he had her scarlet twined around his.
Those tattoos were a promise she couldn't keep and now Clint wears long sleeves when he curls up in bed at night fighting sleep.
When his eyes close he can still hear her voice saying "Let me go."
But he can't let her go, doesn't she know that?
He was supposed to watch her six.