Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was not a phone call Steve had been expecting.

‘Sorry to bother you but what the fu— the heck happened? Hang on, a sec. Lila, sweetie, can you keep an eye on your brother while Mommy’s on the phone. Ok. Back. Now, spill. Clint’s been acting just off these last few days, since he came home, and I was wondering if you could tell me, just, what happened…’

It took him a few moments to put a name to the voice.

Laura.

Clint’s wife.

He opened his mouth.

‘I uh…’

‘I tried calling Natasha but she didn’t pick up so I guess she’s working or something. I just need to know so I can try and help him…He’s…I don’t know if he’s slept ‘cause he won’t stay in the house. He’s up in the fucking – ah, dang it – he’s up in the hayloft and he says he’s fine but, well, I know BS when I hear it.’

‘Laura, I…I’m sorry.’

She went quiet.

'What are you apologising for Steve?'

She'd slipped into Mom mode. He could hear it in her voice; gentle but searing, searching for the root of the problem.

If he'd been in the compound he could have looked to one of the others for help.

He was in a art gallery of all places, being glared at by a middle-aged woman from across the room. The quiet had been almost church-like. And now he was defiling it.

He knew hanging up on Laura wasn't an option, no matter how politely he tried to do it.

'I'm sorry it took us so long to get to him. We--'

'Wait, what?'

Steve froze.

Clint really hadn't talked to her then. About anything.

He headed for the closest exit, all the while trying to explain.

'...we noticed he was gone when he stopped responding on comms, but at the time we couldn't get to his position. By the time we got there he was gone.

...thought at first it had been planned...wasted days trying to find a link...Tony had F.R.I.D.A.Y running on it 24/7.

...we called Natasha back to help.'

And maybe if they'd done that first everything would have been alright. Or if not alright, then better. But Tony had been insistent he could handle it, and Natasha's recon mission was too important, and Steve had been confident that whatever was happening to Hawkeye, he could handle it.

'...she found what we missed.'

It had still taken two days to locate the island with its state-of-the-art mansion all but hidden by lush jungle.

All in all it took them two weeks, four days.

It hadn't seemed a whole lot to Steve at the time. He guessed he'd been wrong.

Laura listened in silence until he was done.

'Steve, he's been kidnapped before. Tortured before. Even after Loki...I mean, it took a while for him to be ok, but he wasn't like this. You're not telling me something, or you don't know. And I'm not sure which is worse.'

He wasn't sure what to say to that.

It wasn't that he didn't know. He wasn't as naive as some people seemed to think. It was just that he didn't want to think about it. Didn't want to think of his colleague and friend held captive at the whim of some European multi-millionaire on a private island scrubbed off the charts in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Slightly more welcome, but still something he tried to block out, was the image of Clint when Steve found him. Dressed in borrowed clothes which were all the wrong sizes, skin stained by the aforementioned millionaire's blood, exhausted and crouched behind the locked door it had taken Steve all of ten seconds to bust open.

He'd expected a snarky 'what took you so long?', or words to that effect, but Clint had just stared up at him. He spoke only to clarify that the blood wasn't his, mostly anyway, before gesturing across what looked to be a lavish living room, towards an open door.

The open door led to a hallway. The hallway to an elevator. A bloodstained elevator with a biometric lock, and a human finger on the floor inside.

Steve didn't go any further, not with Clint sitting in the room behind him.

He went back later with Sam, and together they descended down into the sub-level which had been drilled into the rock itself.

Steve wished it had been the rooms itself which had horrified him, almost wished they'd wandered into some dank, dark dungeon space with tools of torture plain up on the walls.

There were three rooms in the underground suite. The elevator doors opened onto a plush carpeted space, with divans and a king-sized bed. The ceiling was mirrored, and there was a cinema-sized screen taking up one wall.

A curtained doorway led into another smaller room, with a bed and nothing else, followed by a bathroom with a huge tub.

There were corpses, or pieces of them, in every room.

The tub had been partially filled, and a bodyguard type was bent over it, his head submerged in the pink-tinted water.

The television screen had been shattered, and the shards used for some of the butchery Steve saw.

He counted four bodies total.

The face of one had been so badly bludgeoned Steve had thought at first he was looking at the back of someone's head - until he saw the teeth sticking up out of the mess. Unlike the others, this man was half-naked, and the slight presence of belly flab told Steve he was looking at the remains of the house's owner, rather than another bodyguard or underling.

His first reaction was revulsion - towards his team-mate - at the thought that he had worked so closely with a man capable of such sickening violence.

Steve had no problem with violence in context - it was necessary to fight at times, to defend the things you cared about. But this was not a fight. This was slaughter.

Sam was the one who pointed out the brackets on the walls - for chains and restraints. Who noticed the photographs framed on the walls - frightened and bruised men, positioned erotically or obscenely. Sam was the one who put Steve's mind on a different track. And he wished he hadn't.

The bodies had been cold, but they hadn't started to bloat. If they'd been just a few days earlier, things could have been different.

There had been footage, but Steve had not watched it and had forbidden the rest of the team from watching it either. He'd deleted it, just to make sure. Tony could probably summon it back from the digital ether if he so chose, but Steve didn't think he would.

'I'm sorry Laura. I can't--'

'I understand,' she said. And the way she said it stung like she'd called him a coward. 'Thanks, I guess. If you see Natasha...well...I might need some help if she's got the time. But I'm sure we'll manage somehow. Bye.'

Steve didn't get the chance to say anything else before she hung up.

--

Laura put the phone back in its cradle. She wrapped her arms around her middle and squeezed, like she was giving herself a hug. She toyed with the idea of giving one of the other Avengers a call. She didn't really know any of the new ones, but Clint had some sort of a bond with the Sokovian girl, Wanda.

In the end she left the phone where it was.

She poked her head into the living room where Cooper was watching cartoons.

'Coop, can you watch out for your little brother? I'm off out to the barn for a bit.'

A few weeks ago she might have expected a complaint or at the very least a huff or a sigh.

'I got it Mom,' he said, jumping up from the sofa.

Both of the older kids knew something was up with their dad. Lila would complain about Daddy not reading her a story at bedtime, or picking her up and playing with her like he usually did when he was home, but then she would get distracted by her crayons, or her dolls or the tv. Cooper on the other hand didn't mention it at all. Instead he watched everything, and was quiet and helpful. Laura appreciated the help, but it unsettled her. It was like he was trying to be an adult, in a way he never had before. Laura was dreading the day when he'd ask her, point blank, what was wrong with Dad.

The door to the barn was already open. She called up into the empty space above her but got no response.

'Goddamnit' she muttered, as she started to climb the ladder.

She found Clint's nest near the back of the hayloft, hidden behind some crates of junk. The slope of the ceiling meant she had to crawl. Her hair caught on the rough wood over her head and she didn't even want to think about the spiders which might be dropping onto her jumper at that very moment.

She didn't recognise the blanket, it had a vaguely military look to it though so she assumed he'd acquired earlier in his SHIELD career. The cushions were ones which had been in the house when they'd moved in. She'd declared them hideous and had promptly thrown them out. On top of the makeshift bed was a sweatshirt which she assumed he'd been sleeping in - the hayloft was hardly the warmest place to stay at night - and an exceedingly sweaty t-shirt which she balled up and chucked in the rough direction of the ladder to grab for the wash on the way back.

There were empty food wrappers, kept neat with a rubber band, and bottles of water stacked in the corner. There was a torch and some books and a cheap radio, as well as some heavy looking shoe-boxes which she wasn't going to pry through.

It hurt a little to know the nest had been here for so long, and he hadn't told her. But she'd never had to come looking for him like this before.

The one thing missing from the nest was Clint himself.

She swivelled round and saw the open skylight.

She crawled until she could straighten up, then stuck her head out to look.

He had his back to her, arms resting on his knees, looking out over the trees. He looked almost relaxed at first, but then she saw the way his fingers were digging in to the meat of his arm, the rigidity of his neck and shoulders.

'Clint, honey?'

He didn't respond. She looked at his ears, saw the lack of hearing aids, and muttered under her breath.

She wasn't climbing out onto the roof. No way in hell.

So she knocked on the wood until the vibrations got him to look around.

'...sorry,' he murmured, putting the hearing aids back in. Some of the tension seemed to leave him.

He looked like he might have been crying, or it might have been the cold breeze which had been blowing into his face.

'It's been a week, Clint.' She signed the words as she spoke, wanting no misunderstanding. 'The kids want to see you. Please, just talk to me.'

'I can't.'

She could see it was the truth.

'I want to, but I just...'

'Can't,' she finished for him. She sighed and rested her folded arms on the edge of the skylight. 'Clint, you know there's nothing you could tell me that would make me love you any less, right?'

He gave a noncommittal sort of grunt, and looked away. She almost rolled her eyes. They'd had this song and dance before - she'd spent a fair amount of time papering over the cracks in Clint's self-esteem, and she was aware it wasn't a one-off job but an ongoing campaign which she thought she'd been winning up until this moment.

'Laura...can you just leave me alone, right now?' he asked.

Laura felt the small seed of worry begin to sprout. She'd given him space this time, since it seemed to be what he needed, even though every other time he'd craved contact.

After almost a month of near starvation in a cell in Mexico he'd ambushed her with hugs and kisses and they'd spent several evenings cuddled up under blankets and just talking. That was around the time Cooper was conceived, so there'd been more than just talking evidently.

After receiving botched intel and assassinating an innocent man in Las Vegas he'd taken every opportunity to touch her; brushing her arm, fingers lingering on her palm when their hands touched, as if reassuring himself that she was still there. That she wasn't going to disappear.

After Loki he'd been hesitant at first, especially with the kids, and she could see he was still doubting himself. Laura had made him sit down on the couch, then called in called in Cooper and Lila. She'd marshalled them both onto the couch as well, then settled into the leftover space. Lila had climbed between them, and sat like a parrot on her father's shoulders, her still baby-ish fingers poking at ears and feeling his brow. Clint bore it all with saint-like fortitude, stopping her gently when she started to mess with the settings on his hearing aid. Cooper burrowed into his side, pulling an arm over himself. They watched Disney movies until the kids fell asleep. 'See,' she told him, 'you're fine.'

She'd never had to deal with this wilful isolation, this reluctance to talk, or even touch. She wished she'd been a bit more forceful with the Captain, so she could know what this was all about.

'Ok,' she said, trying not to let the fear bleed through. 'Whenever you're ready then...'

She ducked back through the skylight, and back into the house.

Clint's side of the bed was empty again that night.

Chapter Text

The Black Widow ambushed Steve on his way out for his morning run.

'I made coffee,' she said, in lieu of a greeting, pressing a mug into his hand. 'I want to leave in about half an hour, so go get changed and pack an overnight bag.'

'When did you get back?' Steve said. The heat of the mug on his palm convinced him he wasn't dreaming.

'Last night. Which is why you'll be driving.'

And there was nowhere else to go other than ask 'Wait, driving where?'

'To see Laura.' She sipped her own coffee and glanced over the mug at him, no doubt watching every minute change of expression and reading the struggle as it unfolded across his face.

Steve's first thought was of escape. Running was a good option. He could outrun Natasha without breaking a sweat. The problems arose when he stopped. Because she would find him, there was no doubt about that.

He could pull rank. Tell her he had more important things to do than perform a social call. She'd give him a Look, and the capital L was definitely warranted, but he thought he could handle it.

Natasha examined her nails.

Steve heard footsteps behind him.

He looked around to see Wanda, standing in the doorway with her arms folded and smiling, oh so innocently, like she and Natasha hadn't planned this.

So running was definitely out.

He got the Look before he'd even opened his mouth.

He wondered if Wanda was giving Natasha signals - Clint had taught the little witch some sign language - betraying all his thoughts to her, or if Natasha just knew.

'Steve, we need to do something. You were there when we found him, it's your responsibility to tell her the truth.'

He grimaced. There was nothing he could say which would not sound whiny or childish, or just downright cowardly.

'You're right.'

Natasha nodded, as if to say Yeah, of course I am.

'Thirty minutes. We'll be waiting.'

--

Steve didn't bother asking why they were driving rather than flying - he knew there'd be some sort of explanation. He suspected that, depending on Clint's mental state, a quinjet landing in front of his house might not be the best thing for him.

Natasha sat in the passenger seat next to him, sunglasses on so it was impossible to tell if she was asleep or not.

Wanda was in the back, staring out of the windows with more fascination than the scenery probably deserved. Steve didn't ask if she'd ever been on a roadtrip before, not wanting to stir up childhood memories. Wanda was still not one-hundred per-cent stable, and he wondered a little at Natasha bringing her along, into what could potentially become a highly-charged emotional situation. With children. Steve couldn't forget the children.

His grip tightened slightly on the steering wheel. The leather creaked.

Wanda turned her head to look at him, then went back to staring out the window.

--

They switched drivers about seven hours in.

Steve would have been fine to drive the rest of the way - it gave him something to focus on - but Natasha insisted. She also insisted on the radio remaining off.

As they got closer, Steve became more talkative.

'Mightn't he react badly to all three of us turning up like this?'

Natasha shrugged. 'He might. But Laura asked for my help, so things are already pretty bad.'

He wondered if he was imagining the reproach he heard there, about how Laura had reached out to Steve and been, if not exactly rebuffed, then failed in some way.

'It's not really our business though, is it?'

The sunglasses were still on, so the glare didn't have quite the same impact.

'I mean, it could cause more problems...telling her that her husband was...'

Natasha looked back at the road, but Steve was sure he could feel Wanda's eyes on him from the back seat. He felt distinctly ganged-up on.

'If you can't even say the word, I might as well just leave you in the car when we get there.'

'Laura is a good person. She will help Clint,' Wanda said. It was the first words she had spoken, besides thanking Natasha for their fast food lunch, for the entire trip.

As far as Steve knew, Wanda had not met Laura, so he didn't know how she could be so sure.

Wanda smirked at him. He saw it in the rear-view mirror.

'Clint talked to me about her. He loves her very much, even if sometimes he thinks he is not good enough. Like idiot.' The last part was hissed under her breath, and she folded her arms and looked away with an amused scowl.

Natasha nodded in apparent agreement.

'Laura's made of sterner stuff than you might think. Clint might not tell her everything exactly, but she knows enough about what we do now, and back then as well - she's not some weak little housewife kept out of the loop.'

'I never said she was weak,' Steve said. He knew she wasn't weak. The woman ran a house and had raised two kids, on her own for the most part, with a husband who risked his life with monotonous frequency. Steve would not dream of calling that weak.

'Then why didn't you tell her the truth when she called you?'

'I was in a public place, I couldn't just...'

'So, you could have arranged to call her back some other time. But you didn't.'

'Is it because of embarrassment?' asked Wanda. And here came the tag-team again.

'No. Maybe. I don't...'

'Is it guilt?' Natasha said.

'Probably some of it...'

'Repulsion?' Wanda again.

'Yes! Yes, a little...'

They backed off, gave him some breathing space.

'Did you see what he did to them?'

Steve almost didn't realise he'd spoken aloud.

The temperature in the car seemed to drop, and both women pinned him with an unseen glare. It had been a while since he'd felt like this - this feeling of having stumbled straight into some sort of social faux-pas pit. He could almost feel the tendrils of rage-red magic coming from the back seat towards him.

'I know, I know!' He held up his hands. 'But--'

'But?'

Natasha's tone told him to pick his next words very carefully.

Steve had been about to point out Barton's general lack of serious injuries, the worst being a sprain he had likely gotten during the attack on his captors, and some cuts to his palms from his makeshift weapon. There were even signs of the injuries he'd gotten during the mission being treated. Clint had flat-out refused any more in depth medical examination besides a blood test, so there may have been other minor injuries left uncatalogued.

On the whole, though, it had seemed to Steve it really could have been worse.

He shut his mouth.

Natasha raised an eyebrow over the rim of the sunglasses.

'First things first; you do not say 'it could have been worse' to anyone at the farm, unless you want to get punched. I can probably guarantee Clint is already aware of all the myriad ways things could have been worse - he doesn't need you to remind him.'

Steve nodded, not wanting to risk pissing Natasha off further with a 'yes, ma'am'.

'And try not to look so terrified when we talk to Laura. You'd think I was asking you to commit seppuku or something.'

And that was ridiculous.

--

They drove through the night, with Wanda and Natasha sleeping in the car. Wanda snored quietly, while Natasha was completely silent. She was still wearing the damn sunglasses, so Steve wasn't entirely convinced she wasn't faking.

In the morning Natasha took over the wheel and Steve was permitted a few hours to nap before they reached the farm.

He'd asked Natasha to wake him when they were about half an hour away.

Instead, he woke suddenly to a punch to the arm and the sight of the house about eighty yards away.

'We're here.'

--

Laura hugged each of them, and surprised Wanda by knowing instantly who she was. Steve saw her blush a little when she realised that Clint must have talked about her.

'I didn't know what time you guys were gonna get here, but I've got some leftover pancake batter if you want some brunch.'

She ushered them through to the kitchen.

Somehow Natasha ended up on pancake duty, assisted by Lila, who sat on the counter and took upon herself the task of quality control. Any pancakes small enough to be rolled up and swallowed in one bite duly disappeared before they made it onto the stack.

Laura bounced baby Nate on her knee, introducing Wanda to her late brother's namesake. Steve nodded politely as Laura talked about crawling and sleep cycles and teething. He was aware of Cooper sat across the table from him, silent and somehow accusing.

Clint was nowhere in sight.

Natasha set down the first stack of finished pancakes on the kitchen table. Plates clattered. Lila giggled at the sound made by a dwindling bottle of chocolate sauce. The stack was gone in less than a minute. Another appeared and met a similar fate.

Once the supply of pancakes ended, Natasha lifted Lila down from the counter. The little girl wanted to know how long Auntie Nat and her friends were staying.

'Until tomorrow, at least,' Natasha answered.

'Would the two of you like to see some magic?' Wanda asked Lila and Cooper, waving her hand and letting a shimmer of red warp the air.

Lila jumped up and down in excitement, asking if she could turn people into rabbits. Cooper glanced once at his mother. She nodded.

'I can't do rabbits, but I can do this.'

The plates levitated, passing over the children's heads and landing, without breaking, in the sink. Even Cooper looked impressed.

Wanda stood up. 'Come on. I'll show you more outside.'

She held out her hand to be grabbed by Lila. Cooper gave one last look around the table before he followed.

--

They relocated to the porch, where Laura could keep half-an-eye on her kids while remaining out of earshot.

'Where is he?' Natasha asked.

'He's got a nest in the hayloft,' Laura said, with a grim smile.

Steve swallowed.

'He came in and sat down for dinner yesterday evening, and he seemed better but then something must have happened, I don't know, in his head...' She sighed and shook her head. 'He dashed off and the next thing I hear is him puking his guts out. Before I could ask him what was wrong he'd gone back out to the barn. I don't even know what to do anymore. It's like he's gone feral.'

She laughed, but the sound got tangled up and came out as a sob.

At her feet Nate was strapped into some kind of bouncy chair, smacking happily at a stuffed bee which hung over him.

'What did they do to him? Was it some sort of mind-control again?'

Natasha reached out and touched Laura's leg.

She started at the beginning; outlining the mission Clint had been involved in. All the things Steve had told Laura over the phone.

Natasha took out a tablet and showed Laura pictures; news footage of the battle.

'At around two-sixteen this man,' she showed Laura a photograph, coincidentally a mugshot, of a thin dark-haired man with a receding hairline and thick laughter lines, 'Mateo Vargas was driving behind the cordon. We believe he came across Clint while he was injured, possibly unconscious, and Vargas abducted him.'

Laura nodded. She listened like she had when Steve had spoken to her, without questions. Steve suspected it was because she trusted them to tell her everything they could, and if they left something out then there was a damn good reason for it. It had probably taken a lot for her to reach out to them, to ask what had happened.

'Vargas had links to this man, Paul Arthur Roth, a supposedly legitimate businessman born in Germany with stakes in several major companies both in Europe and the USA.'

The face meant nothing to Steve. The man was smiling in his photograph, and if he really thought about it, maybe some of the teeth did look kind of familiar.

'Vargas owed Roth a substantial sum of money. When he saw Clint, I believe he saw an opportunity to wipe out his debt and gain some major brownie points, given Roth's predilections.'

Laura's mouth opened slightly. Natasha held her hand and squeezed it.

'In the early 2000's, one of Roth's employees, a PA of some kind, accused Roth of rape. Charges were dropped, and several months later the PA was found dead from what police called a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. There were no further public accusations, although Roth's name was mentioned in the initial investigation into the 2008 disappearance of a male prostitute. I came across a lot of anecdotal evidence indicating his interest in dominating generally unwilling partners.

'We don't know exactly what happened to Clint, but I think it's safe to say he was sexually assaulted over the course of his captivity before he managed to overpower and kill Roth.'

Steve looked sharply at Natasha, then looked to see Laura's reaction.

Her face was unreadable, eyes fixed distantly on the treeline.

'And the other man, Vargas, is he--?'

'Dealt with,' Natasha said.

And that was the first Steve had heard of it. At least with Natasha there'd be no clean-up, the body was probably long gone along with any further evidence.

'Thank you,' Laura said. Her shoulders relaxed and she sighed. 'Well, I guess that pretty much explains everything...not wanting to touch us...'

Her smile was brittle, too sharp. Tears sparkled in her eyes.

'Goddammit,' she muttered, wiping them with her sleeve. She looked up, meeting Steve's eyes for the first time since they'd sat down.

'Thanks for driving down here to talk to me. I know it probably wasn't easy...'

Natasha gave him a knowing stare, and all he could do was smile and apologise for not telling her sooner. Laura just smiled at him, and he almost wished the ground would swallow him up.

Chapter Text

'You were able to talk to her, yes?' Wanda said, sweeping a strand of hair out of her face. Her cheeks were pink.

Natasha nodded. Wanda sighed in relief and collapsed onto the love-seat on the porch.

'Where is the Captain and Mrs Barton?'

'Steve is trying to atone for his sins by making dinner, and Laura is putting the baby down for a nap. Where'd you leave the other two?'

Wanda waved her hands in the general direction of the woods.

'They have a treehouse out there, with swing. It is alright treehouse. Cooper tells me Clint built it years ago when he was small, when his sister was coming, so he would have somewhere to play outside when the baby came.' She had been smiling while she spoke, but the expression shifted before her next words. 'Why are all the men on this team so...so...?'

'Martyr-like? Difficult to deal with? Self-destructive?'

'Yes, one of those. Or maybe all. Are we leaving tomorrow then?'

Natasha didn't answer, her attention caught by the hint of movement - a shadow. She stood up and darted to the edge of the porch, leaning over the railing and peering around the side of the house.

She locked eyes with Clint.

She couldn't see at this distance if he had his hearing aids in. Her hands moved quickly through the air.

Do not make me chase you!

Clint had frozen mid-step. She remembered what Laura had said, about him acting like a feral animal. Right now, the way he was standing reminded her of a fox, caught in the beam of a flashlight for an instant before it decided to bolt.

Why are you here?

Because you're being an idiot, Natasha responded.

Part of the anger came from dealing with Steve on the ride up to the farm. It probably wasn't fair dishing it out on him. But if she played bad cop this time, it would make Laura's job easier later.

Wanda leaned out next to her, red tendrils swirling around her hands.

'I can hold him if he tries to run.'

Either Clint heard, or he read her lips, because he went pale. Or paler, anyway.

He looked awful.

If he'd been sleeping, he'd been doing it badly. Likewise for eating, and, from the look of things, washing too.

Natasha didn't regret all the nasty little extras which had gone into dealing with Vargas. He'd earned every last toothpick she'd shoved under his fingernails. At the time, she'd worried a little that it was overkill.

'Steve's here as well,' Natasha said.

Clint looked like he wanted to throw up.

Natasha hopped over the railing of the porch.

She didn't approach too quickly, or try to touch him, but instead gestured towards the barn. Clint understood, lowering his head and heading inside.

Wanda hesitated, before apparently deciding the unspoken invitation applied to her as well, and following along.

--

'Well, as far as man-caves go this is without doubt the shittiest one I have ever seen.'

'Thanks 'Tasha,' Clint said.

It was good to hear his voice.

'Do I want to know how many days you've been wearing that shirt?'

Clint blinked, and looked down at his t-shirt like he'd forgotten he'd been wearing it.

'Uh, probably not.'

They were sat a reasonable distance apart, like the points of a triangle.

She noticed the way Clint would avoid looking at her, would look down and then correct himself and try to meet her eyes, followed by a tense shudder before he broke eye contact and the cycle started again.

'This isn't helping, Clint.'

'I know.'

The cycle paused with him looking at the floor. She took note of his posture, the way he seemed to try and make himself look small. He reached up quickly and pressed against his ear, checking that his hearing aid was there, even though he'd put them in when they'd sat down not ten minutes ago.

'Clint, I spoke to Laura...'

He closed his eyes. She could tell he was holding back tears. He breathed in deeply, and she could almost hear him counting in his head. Hold. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

She wanted to be able to sit next to him. The shoulder to shoulder contact which simply meant I'm here for you.

'What did she say?'

She could see he was steeling himself for something, as if he genuinely believed that Laura would leave him over this - that she was too disgusted by him, too ashamed of him. Natasha wasn't sure whether she wanted to knock some sense into him or hug him.

'She wanted to know if I got the guy who kidnapped you. I did. She thanked me. She's probably in the house helping Steve make dinner for everyone right now.'

Clint looked up. His eyes narrowed. He was trying to see if she was lying. Excepting the staring contest before they'd entered the barn, it was the longest bout of eye contact they'd had today. That was progress.

'Why the hell is Steve here?' Clint muttered. Natasha noticed the slight bristling of tension which would have to be dealt with before they left. At some point, Steve was just going to have to man up and talk to Clint.

Natasha shared a glance with Wanda.

'For his own good,' Natasha said. Clint didn't press any further.

'I feel dirty,' he said, after a few seconds of silence. 'No matter what I do. And every time I try to do something...normal I keep picturing it...'

And the first crack had appeared in the dam. Natasha steadied herself, aware that no matter how much she wanted to go to him, to try and ease him through the pain, she would not move unless he did first.

'I tried to pick up Nate, and all I could think about was...was that fucker on top of me.'

His fingers were pressing into the flesh of his forearm, his knuckles white.

'He took my ears, as well, apart from when he was--,' he swallowed and stopped, focusing on the floor in front of him. He took a deep breath and continued. 'He wanted me to listen to what he said when he was inside me. He said he'd be the only voice I'd hear.'

Natasha noticed a few flickers of red snaking through the air. She looked to the side and saw Wanda only just keeping it together. Her jaw was locked and stiff and the look in her eyes was, quite simply, murderous. Natasha tried to catch her attention, thinking calm down, get in control or get out, and hoping that Wanda would pick up on it. Because once Clint saw her he would clam up, the lid would slam shut on whatever it was that was festering inside him and Natasha didn't know when she'd have another chance to get it out.

'Wanda...'

Too late.

Clint looked pained, retreating back into his corner. And Natasha was astonished. Did he really still think they were angry at him?

'I am fine.' Wanda spoke through bared teeth. 'It is a very good thing the man who hurt you is dead, or else I would find him and rip him into such tiny pieces they would need magnifying glass to put him back together.'

Clint blinked at her. Natasha saw the moment realisation dawned, followed by an immediate backlash of 'thatcan'tbe...', swiftly replaced with wary acceptance. It was not a complete victory, but it was decisive.

'You need to shower,' Natasha said.

'Yeah. I know. Last time I lifted my arms I almost knocked myself out...'

It wasn't much of a smile, but it was a start.

'In that case you can go down the ladder last.'

--

Laura heard the footsteps on the porch and then the sound of the door opening.

She heard Natasha murmuring something, and then the stairs leading to the second floor creaked.

She noticed Steve stopped paying attention to the water he was boiling, tipping his head slightly to listen.

'Do you need help with anything?' Wanda said as she stepped into the kitchen. Natasha was just behind her.

'Could you go and get Lila and Coop in from outside? Food'll be ready in about half an hour.'

Wanda nodded and disappeared back off outdoors.

Laura turned to Natasha.

'Was that...?' She gestured towards the ceiling, to the rooms above.

Natasha nodded, pulling out a chair and sitting at the kitchen table.

'He looked awful. I'm making him take a shower and then we'll see where we are...'

'Thank you. Oh! Steve, the water--'

The pot was bubbling over.

Steve turned and fumbled with the stove until he found the right knob and turned the heat down. Laura got up to start on the rice, but as she did she heard Nate waking up in the other room.

'Can you two handle the rice while I go feed Nate?'

'Of course,' Natasha said.

--

'What's his condition?' Steve asked, once Laura left the room.

Natasha knew why the question annoyed her. It was very much Steve, team leader rather than Steve, friend. It was all about recovery times and how soon he'd be back out there. It was vague and impersonal.

'You want the truth?' Natasha said, decanting rice into the boiling water. She watched it swirl and sink.

'I've got no use for a lie, Natasha.'

'He's fucked-up.' She put down the packet, added salt to the water and put the lid on the pot. She turned to face Steve.

'He's been fucked-up before, but not like this and not for a long time.'

Steve swallowed. 'When?'

Natasha shrugged. 'Before my time. It's his word, not mine. After his brother screwed him over, that's how he described it. Just 'fucked-up'.'

'But what does that mean?'

Natasha shrugged. 'The way he described it to me - how things were - was like being pulled in two different directions. It was too painful to think about so he just, sort of, drew back and blocked himself off from it. Retreated and lived like an animal, from day to day. It was easier then, because he had nothing to go back to.'

She glanced at Steve. His brow was furrowed as he frowned at the pot on the stove.

'What do we do to fix it?' he said.

Natasha sighed. She could hear voices outside; Wanda and the kids.

'We're working on it,' she said.

Chapter Text

Laura hesitated while setting the table.

'I'll go ask,' Natasha said.

She found Clint washed and re-dressed in clean clothes, curled up on the edge of the bed he shared with Laura.

He seemed to be asleep, but bolted upright as soon as Natasha's foot hit the creaky floorboard just inside the door.

It seemed to take longer than usual for him to really see her.

'I thought you didn't sleep with those in at home,' she said, gesturing to his ears.

Clint blinked.

'Uh, I forgot. Didn't really intend to fall asleep...'

Natasha wasn't sure that was really the whole truth.

'Dinner's being plated up. Do you want any?'

Clint looked away.

'...I guess. I don't...'

'You don't have to eat with everyone. We can leave some for you.'

Clint shrugged, still not looking at her.

'Uh, if there's any leftovers then I guess that's fine...'

Natasha rubbed her forehead.

'Clint, there's two growing children and a Steve down there. There won't be leftovers. If you want food, then just ask for it.'

The reaction was immediate and unexpected.

Clint turned pale, the blood just seeming to drain out of his face in two seconds flat. He scrambled off the bed and lurched in the direction of the bathroom.

The door slammed shut and Natasha soon heard him retching.

It had to be the words. Something in the words she'd said had triggered some thought, or a memory.

She lingered for a minute.

The retching stopped - he probably didn't have much left in his stomach anyway - replaced by a muffled sound. Natasha had never heard Clint cry before, not for real anyway. The sound was angry and squashed, each small sob ruthlessly suppressed.

She'd seen him punch things before, or kick, in times of high emotion. But of course he couldn't do that here - it would leave marks, traces for Laura and the kids to find. And somebody would have to fix whatever he broke.

He couldn't laugh, or joke about it, when he was on his own.

So that just left this.

Natasha opened her mouth but couldn't think of the right words. She closed her mouth, and went back downstairs.

--

'I'm thinking we might stay a few days, if that's alright?' Natasha said.

Laura looked across the table.

'Not a problem. We've got plenty of room, and I'm sure the kids don't mind.'

Lila and Cooper shook their heads.

Natasha nodded, and Laura wondered what it meant that Natasha wanted to stay longer. Was she that worried that she didn't want to leave Clint alone? Laura bit her lip.

She'd never thought of Clint as being the type to commit suicide, at least not conventionally, but she knew you could never tell completely. She'd had an aunt, when she'd been little, whose husband had gone into the garage one night, stuck a hosepipe onto the exhaust and gassed himself in the family car. No warning. No note. No change in behaviour. It could happen anywhere.

Natasha caught her eye and shook her head slightly. Laura was sure her thoughts had been only too easily readable. Cooper was looking at her strangely as well. She swallowed, tried to re-orientate herself and stop thinking about her aunt's shell-shocked face.

'As long as you guys don't have anywhere you need to be...you're welcome here.'

'The rest of the team can cope without us for a little while. Isn't that right, Steve?'

Steve's only contribution thus far to the dinner table conversation had been compliments on Laura's chilli recipe.

'Well, excluding any potential world-ending emergencies...' he said.

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him.

Laura lifted Nate a little higher onto her lap. The baby had started to wiggle. She distracted him by giving him a piece of bread to gnaw on. She was looking forward to the day when Nate was one-hundred-per-cent on solid food, and her boobs could finally get a rest. In the midst of newborn-induced insomnia, some months ago, Clint had said something about four being a good number. An even number. Laura had kicked him under the covers, and when Nate woke up a few hours later she poked him in the side and told him it was his turn.

When dinner was over the table was cleared and the dishes washed by Steve. Wanda and Natasha were dragged off by Lila to watch movies, and Laura decided to follow.

She didn't realise until ten minutes later that she'd left Cooper in the kitchen with Steve.

--

'You're here because of Dad, aren't you?'

Steve almost dropped the plate he was about to place on the drying rack.

He turned around and there was Cooper, just looking at him. Steve could have sworn the boy had left with the others. Science told him that sneaky spy skills were not genetic, but it was either that or Steve was just stupidly easy to sneak up on.

'Mom said he's not well,' Cooper said with a scowl. 'She never says it like that. She says he got hurt or that he's tired. She's never said 'not well' before.'

Steve had thought being put on the spot by Natasha was bad.

'Is he going to die?' Cooper said quietly, his bottom lip starting to shake.

'No!' Steve said, alarmed and wondering how long Cooper had been nursing that dreadful thought. 'No, he's not going to die. He just...needs some time to...'

The boy rubbed his eyes, scrubbing at the tears threatening to come.

'Cooper, your Dad is fine. I promise.'

'No he's not!'

He didn't shout, but his voice wavered, and Steve's hands were still soaking wet and covered with suds from the dishwater.

'Even Mom's freaked out. And he won't...it's like he doesn't care.'

Steve started to tell Cooper that it wasn't true, but then the boy mumbled something and the tears started for real.

The kid didn't seem to care about the damp, soapy hands when Steve knelt on the ground and hugged him. Cooper carried on mumbling, and Steve could finally make out the words.

'I want my Dad...I want my Dad...' he whimpered.

There was nothing Steve could do, other than whisper soothing words and wait for the crying to stop.

When Laura appeared in the doorway she looked shocked, but then she mouthed two words at Steve. Thank You.
--

The bedtime shift, as Laura considered her evenings, began around half-six. She'd run a bath in the main bathroom and let Lila get in it while she fed Nate. Then she'd let some of the water out and wash the baby before it got too cold. She'd change him into his pajamas, before putting him down for the night in the crib in his room. Then she'd go and read to Lila, hopefully already changed with teeth brushed, settled under the covers with just the bedside light on. Cooper would head up to the bathroom about a half hour later and see himself off to bed - he'd decided a year earlier that he was too old for bedtime stories. Laura expected his light out before ten.

It didn't go quite to plan this time, however.

Lila wanted to stay up, with the grown-ups, and Laura didn't have time to argue with her if she wanted to get Nate to bed properly. If she left it too late he'd be waking her up every few hours. So she made a deal.

'Sorry, Wanda, you're on story duty tonight. Hope you don't mind?'

The poor girl looked a bit taken aback, but Laura didn't have time to feel guilty as she wrangled the younger of her children upstairs.

She wasn't sure if Clint was still in the house, or if he'd climbed out of a window at some point and escaped back to his nest.

Lila was washed and dried in record time, and sitting in her bed with a thick book of fairy tales.

'She's allowed two stories,' Laura said to Wanda in the doorway, making sure Lila heard her.

She settled Nate into his crib, made sure the blankets weren't tucked in too tight, and then headed downstairs to collapse onto the couch.

'You want a drink?' Natasha asked.

'Wine,' Laura answered. 'There's a bottle in the corner next to the fridge.'

Natasha brought the bottle and some glasses, and set them down on the coffee table.

'You're an angel. Wait, has Cooper gone upstairs to bed yet?'

Even if it was only half a glass, she didn't want him to see her drinking and assume it was to help her cope. She was probably being overcautious, but it was a habit she didn't care to break by this point.

'This is an adults only zone right now.'

'Oh thank god.'

Natasha poured out the wine. Laura took her glass and settled back into the cushions.

'Thanks so much for coming. I didn't want to ask, but...'

'It's ok,' Natasha said.

'You don't think he's a danger to himself or anything?'

Natasha smirked. It was only there for a split-second, and then it was gone. And then Laura realised what she had said. She snorted. Then she started laughing. And she couldn't stop.

Because Clint was a danger to himself. Constantly. It was like his natural state. If SHIELD, and now the Avengers, didn't take care of all that then she'd have the medical bills to prove it.

Laura tried to tell Natasha what she'd meant, but every time she opened her mouth another burst of laughter came out. This is it, she thought. Hysteria.

Eventually she calmed down.

'I know what you meant. And no. I don't think he is,' Natasha said, once Laura had wiped the tears from her eyes.

'He's more likely to run, you think?'

'Yes.'

Laura nodded. That seemed more like Clint. But she still couldn't quite get the image out of her head of a man sat alone in a car with the engine on while his family slept on unaware.

--

Steve had several texts from Sam, mostly asking where the hell everyone was. He went out onto the back porch and dialed Sam back.

'Steve! It's like a ghost-town up here. Where are you?'

'I'm in Iowa.'

There was a pause.

'Ok. And why are you-- Oh, is this about the thing with Barton? How is he, man?'

'I haven't even seen him. I just...' Steve took a few steps away from the house and lowered his voice. 'I just had to comfort his son while he cried because he thought his dad didn't care about him anymore, Sam.'

'That's rough. Is Natasha up there with you?'

'Yeah. Her and Wanda.'

'Well, Natasha knows how to handle Barton, so just follow her lead I guess. When are you guys going to be back?'

Steve sighed. 'I don't know.'

'I can hold down the fort for now, but if anything comes up we'll need you guys back here.'

'I hope so.'

'Steve, Natasha wouldn't have dragged you all the way to Iowa if she didn't think you could help somehow.'

'I don't know. I kinda thought she did it to punish me.'

'Steve...' Sam's tone almost sounded reproachful.

'She told his wife what happened. Stopped short of showing her what was left when we got there.' He didn't tell Sam that he suspected Natasha had killed someone herself, because he was pretty sure all of them had already worked that out when she turned up with the info, smelling of bleach and soap.

'Steve, I'm not going to say it wasn't fucked up.'

And there was that phrase again.

'But I'm going to say Barton didn't give them anything more than they already deserved.'

'Sam, you know about how to deal with PTSD and stuff, surely you'd be more use down here than me.'

'Maybe so. But I didn't get press-ganged by the Witch and the Widow into taking a trip to Iowa. And Barton knows how to reach me if he wants to talk.'

'Sam, he's been living in his own barn for the past week, like an owl, I don't think he's capable...'

'And I'm sure Natasha has it covered. She knows him better than any of us. I'll call you if anything big happens that looks like more than we can handle. I'm not bailing you out with a false alarm.'

He hung up before Steve could complain that he hadn't asked him to bail him out, before looking back and realising he kinda had.

There was a screech of witch-like laughter from indoors. Steve looked over his shoulder but couldn't see far enough inside to spot the source. It hadn't sounded like Natasha, but then again Natasha probably had a hundred different laughs servicing every possible persona.

He stepped back into the kitchen and pulled the back door to.

--

Laura didn't really get the opportunity to have friends over, to chat and to drink. Granted, the present company were technically her husband's co-workers, but it was the closest she'd had for a long time.

She asked, with mock seriousness, if Wanda was over twenty-one before she poured her a glass of wine.

She'd offered Steve some of the same, or the option of a beer from the fridge, but apparently alcohol didn't work with the super serum.

Laura took the opportunity to extract as much gossip as possible. She was still curious about Thor, particularly since she'd barely had a chance to talk to him the last time Clint brought his work home with him.

Around half-nine noises came through on the baby monitor, of Nate fussing as he started to wake.

Laura heard a door open. It sounded like their bedroom door - most of the doors had their own distinctive creaks which Laura had come to know over the years.

The fussing turned into crying and Laura started getting up.

She heard Clint's voice come through, mumbling gentle nonsense in an attempt to get Nate to quiet down.

It would take more than that though, and Clint knew that. Nate wouldn't settle again until he was held, allowed to rest his tiny head on the crook of a shoulder and snuggled into the warmth of another human.

She wasn't sure who switched off the baby monitor as she went upstairs, but her money was on Natasha.

She found Nate sitting up in his crib, holding onto the bars, and Clint sat on the carpet under the window with his head in his hands.

''m sorry,' he said.

When Laura leaned over the crib Nate held out his pudgy arms towards her. She lifted him up and rubbed his back.

'It's ok,' she said. 'It's ok.'

It took a few minutes of rocking and soothing before Nate quieted down. Clint stayed where he was, looking at the floor.

'Clint...' she tried, taking a step towards him.

He flinched.

'I...' she said.

He moved so quick it startled her. She jolted Nate by accident and the almost sleeping baby came alert with a cry. Clint weaved past her, out into the corridor and she heard his bare feet on the stairs. Nate howled in her ear and she tried to rock him, murmuring to him in a calm voice even though she felt anything but calm.

She heard shouts from downstairs, the front door opening but not closing.

The rhythm of her rocking was off, more like a ship on a stormy sea, and her voice sounded brittle. She was about two bad thoughts away from tears herself.

'Is not important, Lila sweetie. Go back to sleep.'

She heard Wanda's voice out in the hallway.

The girl appeared in the doorway and offered to take over. Laura couldn't thank her enough.

'Where's--?'

'Outside,' Wanda answered. 'Natasha and Steve are with him.'

Laura hoped it was her own imagination, or the gloom inside the room, which made Wanda look so scared.

--

Clint stopped running around the back of the barn.

Natasha was glad.

The last thing she wanted was to have to tackle him and pin him down.

It was pitch black. With the barn between them and the outdoor lights of the house the only source of illumination were the stars above.

Natasha heard Clint panting.

The short sprint from the house shouldn't have been enough to leave him winded. She realised he was hyperventilating.

'Clint!'

Steve jogged to a stop behind her.

'What the hell was that?'

Natasha could have smacked him. His tone was stern, demanding, leader-of-the-team.

Clint maybe tried to speak. All Natasha heard was a groan. His breathing wasn't slowing. As her eyes adjusted she could make out Clint, hunched over on the grass and shaking head to toe.

'Clint, you're having a panic attack,' she said, crouching down near but not next to him, keeping her voice level and soft. 'You need to slow down your breathing.'

The only sign he'd heard her was him shaking his head.

Natasha wasn't sure what he was objecting to: that he was having a panic attack, that he needed to breathe better, or that she and Steve were there watching.

If she'd been able to touch him she'd have squeezed his hand, made him keep count by squeezing back until he had it covered. She moved until she was in front of him.

'Clint, look at me. I can't see shit out here, but I know you can. You're gonna give yourself a major headache if you don't try to slow down your breathing now.'

She knew he was listening when she heard a few deeper breaths interspersed with the chaotic, hare-pace breathing from before.

She was aware of Steve standing by and watching them.

'Go. I've got this,' she said. He didn't need her to tell him twice.

Gradually Clint calmed down enough to speak.

It was mainly cursing at first, and whenever he seemed about to say more his breathing would pick up again and he'd have to concentrate to slow it down again.

'This is bullshit...' he managed.

'It is,' Natasha agreed.

'I should not...should not be this fucked up about this.'

'That's a matter of opinion.'

'No...but...it didn't even hurt most of the time...so why...why is...' The noise he made was almost a growl as his breathing wavered again.

'Clint, don't you think you have enough to feel crap about without feeling crap about the fact that you feel crap in the first place?'

He didn't answer, whether because he didn't want to admit she had a point, or he was still trying to work out what her point was, she wasn't sure.

'Can you stand?'

'Yeah.'

She didn't say anything when he used the wall of the barn to lever himself upright. There wasn't enough light to see if he was still shaking or not.

'Where are you sleeping tonight?'

'Uh...I'm not a hobo Natasha, I do have a bed.'

'Then why aren't you sleeping in it?'

'Are you kidding me?'

'If it's sleeping next to someone you're struggling with, you have several guest rooms and multiple couches to choose from. So why the shitty nest in the barn?'

'Because!' Clint snapped. 'I'm not...I mean, I have a reason, it's just...hard to explain...'

'Which means it makes no sense.'

She was skirting close to danger here, pushing him like this so close to the panic attack before.

'I just...if I end up sleeping on my own couch it means I've failed, right? It's my house. I should be able to sleep in my own bed. But I can't right now, because of all of this, and the nightmares and everything...so...'

'...so, the barn.'

'Yeah, for now.'

Natasha rubbed her forehead.

'Clint, might I suggest that at this point, sleeping anywhere in the house would be an improvement on the current situation.'

Clint made a noise which Natasha translated as: you may be right, but I'm too stubborn to accept that fact right now.

She sighed.

'Just get some sleep. You look like a zombie.'

'Ouch. Well, easier said than done. Tell Laura I'm sorry...'

'I'm not passing messages for you. I'll make sure she knows you're ok-ish, though.'

'Thanks. 'Night Tasha.'

She lost track of him almost immediately in the dark.

Chapter Text

Laura woke up to the smell of bacon.

The last time that had happened had been a Valentines day four or five years ago, when Clint had had some time off - two weeks, if she remembered right. And it had been bliss. Lila had been in the grip of the terrible twos, and needed eyes on her at all times. Even sleep was barely a respite. Laura couldn't count the number of times she'd had to untangle the mess of blankets in Lila's crib which the toddler seemed to insist on heaping over her face like a shroud. Laura had been concerned - she didn't remember Cooper being quite so eager to chuck himself out of the gene pool in the most violent way possible. Clint had laughed and said maybe she took after him.

Laura climbed out of bed.

She was alone, and the covers on the other side were undisturbed. She pulled a tatty jumper on over her nightgown and headed for the stairs.

Cooper's door was ajar, so that meant he was up. She could vaguely hear pipes rattling, which meant someone was having a shower. She couldn't hear any water running though, so it had to be one of the guest rooms.

She almost ran into Cooper on the bottom step.

'Auntie Nat's almost done with breakfast,' he said, then darted past her, presumably to pass the message on.

Laura went on into the kitchen.

'I know this looks like a lot of food but--'

'I know. I remember making breakfast for you guys last time. I guess I should be glad Thor didn't stay - there'd have been nothing left in the house.'

Natasha had made use of every possible cooking surface, with pans cooking bacon, hash browns and eggs, and trays of sausages in the oven. The toaster popped, and Laura could smell freshly-brewed coffee. Whenever she made coffee, if seemed like something always happened to call her away and when she finally got round to drinking it it was stone cold.

'Don't worry about the mess. We'll clear it up.'

'You've no idea how long it's been since I heard those words,' Laura said, helping herself to coffee.

Cooper reappeared, with a bed-headed but alert Lila. The boy pulled out a chair for his little sister, then looked towards the backdoor.

'Should I tell Dad...?'

He swallowed, and Laura saw him bracing himself for disappointment and rejection.

'I'll go see if he wants any. You guys go ahead and start if everything's ready,' Laura said, hearing more feet on the stairs. She opened one of the cabinets and rooted around until she found a thermos, pouring some coffee into it.

She shoved her bare feet into a pair of boots by the back porch, and crossed the grass to the barn. Her breath was visible in the air in front of her, and the grass still glistened with the morning dew.

She puzzled over the ladder in the barn for a few moments; shifting the thermos through several potential carrying positions. Eventually she settled on wrapping a finger around the loop of the handle and hoping for the best.

Once she made it to the loft she called her husband's name, stamping on the wood so the vibrations would alert him if he was sans hearing aids at this time in the morning. She shoved open the skylight as she passed, filling the loft with sunlight.

She'd clearly woken him up.

He was still in amongst the blankets, blinking across at her with a face that would probably scare most people. Laura happened to know that was just how his face looked first thing in the morning.

'I brought coffee,' she said, signing the key word with the thermos in one hand.

Clint sat up.

One half of his face still bore the impressions of the blankets and his short hair was spiked up in uneven tufts.

He saw her smirking.

'Well, we can't all roll out of bed looking perfect,' he muttered, reaching for the thermos.

Laura raised an eyebrow at him, gesturing at her current ensemble. The ragged jumper with paint-stains on the sleeves, and probably traces of baby spit-up on top of, what she privately referred to as, her granny nightie.

He tipped his head to one side, as if questioning her point. She saw the little dots of plastic in his ears, the skin around them slightly reddened by a night of twisting and turning.

Their fingers briefly touched as the thermos changed hands. Laura tried not to think about how that was the first time in weeks that they'd touched, skin to skin.

Clint didn't even seem to realise as he unscrewed the cap off the flask and drank a mouthful.

'Did Natasha make this?' he asked.

'How can you tell?'

''Cus it's strong enough to raise the dead.'

'Hey, if a beautiful redhead's making me coffee in the morning, I'm not complaining.'

Clint almost spat as he tried not to laugh.

'Wasn't a complaint. Is said redhead also cooking bacon? 'Cus you kinda smell of bacon right now.'

'Yes. And everything else as well. We're about to eat, are you coming?'

She saw the walls going back up. A different sort of look came onto his face.

'I'm alright...maybe later...'

'Cooper asked if you were gonna be at breakfast.'

'Don't.' Clint shook his head.

Laura took a deep breath.

'Which part is the problem? And don't just tell me there isn't a problem, Clint, because there clearly is.'

Clint swallowed the last of the coffee.

'Natasha told you what she knows right?'

'Yeah. She did. I don't know exactly what happened to you...but I know the gist of it, and all I want is to help.'

He drew his knees up to his chest, spinning the thermos in his fingers.

'I never told you details about all the other times things went bad. I didn't tell you what it felt like to have your body turn on you and start to break bits of you down just to keep going for a little longer. I didn't tell you what it was like to have someone in my head, taking everything--'

'You didn't need to then. Clint, honey, I'm just trying to understand so I know what to do. Because I don't know what I should be doing right now to help.'

Clint's fingers had started moving quicker, with a restless rhythm, spinning the empty canister of the thermos like a top.

'You shouldn't have to be doing anything, ok? This is my fault--'

'It's not your fault.'

'Well, we can agree to disagree on that one.'

'Clint, what happened wasn't your fault.'

Clint looked at her, lips set in a grimace of annoyance.

'Drop it, please Laura.'

Laura threw up her hands. It was too early in the morning, and Clint could be stubborn as a husky sometimes.

'Fine. But tell me, why won't you eat with us?'

Clint sighed.

'It's more than one thing I guess...but the main thing...The guy used food as, like...I don't know whether to call it a reward or a punishment. He went in for the whole sensory deprivation thing. Blindfold, no hearing aids. And nothing to eat for days. Then all of a sudden there'd be this smell, and he'd take the blindfold off and there'd be a plate of food, looking like something straight out of a magazine.

'But the big thing was; I had to ask him, beg him, for it. First two times I told him to...well, I wasn't exactly civil to him. By the third time...it was harder.'

He was still spinning the thermos, but slower, as if the act of talking were helping him wind down. He sighed and lowered his head.

'I don't know. I sit down at the table and I just think of the things I did...and I just feel so dirty.'

The thermos stopped in its tracks. Laura had her hand pressed over it.

'It'll be ok.'

'You know that, do you?'

'I know you. And we can fix this. Like they do for phobias. Graded exposure.'

He looked at her like she was speaking French.

'It's psychology - you use small steps gradually leading up to the feared situation, and you stay on one until the stress response is almost gone and then you move onto the next one.'

'This is part of that online course thing you were doing last year isn't it?'

Laura nodded, already thinking out the possible steps. Step one would be something small - maybe just visualisation. Then perhaps being able to eat a home-cooked meal in the hayloft, working up to being able to eat alone in the house. And after that...

'Laura, you don't have to do anything.'

His fingers brushed hers again. No wincing, no flicker of discomfort or distance coming into his eyes.

She sighed.

'I just want you to tell me what you need.'

'I know. I know.' He smiled, and laid his hand over hers. The warmth, the feel of the calluses where his fingers held his bowstring, all of it was familiar.

'I'll work it out,' he murmured, looking down at their hands.

She wasn't satisfied. It was a far cry from getting him to eat a decent meal and coming into the house, but that little piece of contact gave her hope that the end of the tunnel wasn't too far away.

Chapter Text

Cooper and Steve were left in charge of the dishes.

More accurately, Natasha had assigned the task of washing up to Steve. Cooper had just appeared at his side and started helping.

Two frying pans down, Steve told him he didn't have to help. That he could go and play if he wanted to.

'I'm fine,' the boy said, shrugging. 'I think Auntie Nat's mad at you.'

'Yeah, I think so too.'

'Not scary mad. But normal mad. Dad said if Auntie Nat gets scary mad at you then you're probably already dead.'

Steve looked at the child, wondering how much Clint and Laura told them.

'Well, I'm very grateful I've never had to deal with scary-mad Natasha before. Because she's scary enough as it is.'

Cooper shrugged, as if he didn't really see it. Steve tried to imagine growing up with Black Widow as a family friend, and couldn't picture it.

'What'd you do to make her mad?'

Steve paused mid-scrub.

He decided on half-truths, because it was better to try and keep things simple.

'I, uh, think she might be a little angry that I let your dad get hurt like he did.'

He didn't look at Cooper as he spoke, rinsing off a plate and handing it to the kid to dry.

'Was it your fault?'

It didn't sound accusing, just curious.

'They're my team, Cooper. It's my responsibility to keep them safe.'

'Dad says you're only responsible for yourself and what you do.'

'Well, I guess that's true too.'

They went on washing and drying in silence, and Steve found it comfortable enough.

When they were almost done Laura poked her head in.

'Cooper, I want you and Lila to do some schoolwork before lunch. I've been letting you off easy these past few weeks. Come on, I'll take over.'

'Ok, Mom.'

He left the dish towel on the counter-top and Laura picked it up.

They were down to the final few dishes, and the cutlery.

'Y'know, he's normally pretty shy around people. Takes him a while to open up. He must like you.'

Steve smiled stiffly.

'He's a good kid. Thoughtful.'

'Don't I know it,' Laura murmured. 'This whole thing's been hard on him. Clint's never been this distant...Even after what Loki did to him.'

It all felt like such a long time ago, Steve had almost forgotten. Forgotten about the days Clint had spent as Loki's thrall before Natasha had beat the mind control out of him.

They'd never talked about it.

Steve knew Clint was still a little twitchy about mind control, although he seemed to have forgiven Wanda for trying it on him pretty easily. Stark had tried to goad him about it a few times but left off when it failed to produce any kind of reaction.

'How did you...After Loki, was he...?'

'Well when he first came home I think he was still a little high on the whole battle with aliens thing, and the pain meds too - I hate those grappling arrows. Every time he uses them he gets hurt. I mean, it's better than him being killed but still! - Anyway, so when he first comes home he's kinda spaced. Then about two days later I catch him with this look in his eyes as he's sat playing with Lila, like he's lost in thought but not good thought. And I can guess what he's thinking - he's thinking about how small and fragile she is and how if it happens again, if someone gets in his head again, she wouldn't stand a chance.

'So I went about showing him it wasn't worth worrying about. That he was safe here, and that we were all safe too. I stuck him with story duty every night - which was a hardship, let me tell you. I was in the middle of reading Cooper one of the Harry Potter books - and I set the kids on him at every opportunity. Blanket forts. Family movie nights. All the stuff he missed when he wasn't home. And it worked, in the end. Or at least, it tired him out so much he didn't have the energy to think about it anymore.'

'Sounds like a good plan.'

'Yeah. Not gonna work this time though.'

She sighed and folded up the dish towel.

'I have faith though,' she said. 'Thanks so much for doing the washing up. It's a real help.'

--

When Natasha mentioned to Lila that Steve liked to draw too she knew what she was signing him up for.

The kitchen table was layered under sheets of paper, crayons, felt tip pens and glitter glue.

Natasha supervised from a safe distance, perched on one of the counter-tops.

Lila was delighted to find a fellow artist, and made Steve draw outlines for her while she coloured them in and added backgrounds. They somehow both had glitter in their hair already. Natasha was pleased to see Steve seemingly enjoying himself, giving Lila pointers on her butterflies and complimenting her colour choices.

When they were done, and the table had to be cleared away for dinner, Lila raced around the house presenting everybody with one of her and Steve's collaborations. She gave Nate's one to Laura to put up in his room.

When she came back into the kitchen she was still holding one drawing. Natasha knew without having to read the label who it was for.

The little girl looked around, then back at the drawing in her hands.

Natasha knew she could offer to take it and pass it on to Clint, but suspected that Lila wanted to give it to him herself.

'Are you guys done tidying up? I want to get started on dinner,' Laura said.

Lila turned around and held the picture up.

'This one's for Daddy,' she said.

'Is it? Why don't you go put it somewhere safe, and then when Daddy's feeling better you can give it to him, alright?'

Lila nodded, and darted out of the room.

Natasha moved off the counter so Laura could start pulling ingredients from the fridge and cupboards.

'Did you manage to convince Clint to come into the house for dinner tonight? I don't like that he's not eating properly...' Natasha said.

Laura shook her head, laying out the chopping board,

'I don't think so. But he told me why he can't. I guess I was sort of right when I thought mind control at first. Did they suffer? The ones who did this?'

'As far as I could tell, yes.' Natasha didn't look across to see Steve's reaction.

'Good,' Laura said, slicing an onion down the middle with more force than necessary.

--

Laura stayed up and downstairs until after midnight.

The bedtime shift was over and done, and the guests had retired to their rooms for the night.

She got up when she heard the backdoor open and footsteps on the kitchen floor.

There was the sound of water running into the sink, and then something being passed under the spray.

She switched on the kitchen light.

'Hey,' she said. 'You brought the bowl back?'

She hadn't heard food being scraped off into the trash, so hopefully he'd eaten it all.

Clint hummed in response, shutting the faucet off when the bowl and cutlery were clean.

'You didn't wait up just to check that, did you?' he murmured.

'No,' she admitted. She chewed her lip. 'Am I the reason you can't sleep in our bed?'

Clint made a face.

'Laura, do I have to do this now?'

His knuckles were gripping the counter, his body turned toward the back door even as he stayed looking at her. Making sure he had an escape route. She'd pressed too far too fast.

'No. I guess not...' She shook her head and looked at her feet.

Clint sighed.

'Somehow I don't think the rest of the household'll appreciate waking up to the sound of my freak-outs,' he muttered.

'Lila drew something for you today. Do you think you'd be able to come into the house for a bit so she can give it to you?'

Clint's smile was pained. 'Sure.'

He was the first one to leave, and Laura went upstairs to bed alone.

Chapter Text

When Steve woke up shortly before five, he noticed his phone blinking at him.

The first thing he saw were the texts from Sam, apologising for something.

...caught me off guard and half asleep. Sorry!

Then he saw the voice message from Stark.

'So a lil birdy told me that you, Black Widow and Wanda are down at another little birdy's place. I'm assuming the three of you didn't just fancy a vacation all of a sudden because who the hell goes on vacation in Iowa. So something's going on, and none of you told me about it. Kinda hurt, if I'm honest. Call me when you get this.'

The timestamp was from just after two that morning. If Steve was lucky, Tony hadn't yet lost patience and decided to come and see for himself what was going on.

Steve took his phone and left the room, heading for the back porch. The house was still dark, but he managed without walking into anything.

He was out on the porch in the glare of the security light with his thumb poised to dial when he realised he wasn't alone.

Clint was sat on the edge of the porch, in sweatpants and a t-shirt, with a slice of half-eaten toast in one hand.

Steve had expected him to look worse. Haunted maybe. Instead all he looked was tired and a little pale.

Clint nodded at him in acknowledgement, then gestured to the phone in his hand.

'Who's bothering you at this time in the morning?'

'Stark. He wants to know what we're all doing down here.'

Clint frowned. 'Tell him it's none of his fucking business,' he said, taking a bite of his toast.

'Since when has that ever worked...'

'First time for everything. Tell him I said it's none of his fucking business then. Not like he doesn't already know everything.' The last part was added in a bitter undertone.

Steve's mouth felt dry.

It should have been simple. Asking how he was. It was practically his job to know the condition of his team, even though Clint was technically a reserve member. And even approaching him as a friend, it should have been straightforward.

What he said was 'We didn't watch any of the tapes.'

Blurted it out like a schoolboy put on the spot by a stern principal with a cane in his hand.

Clint's expression became a little colder. He flicked the last bit of toast into the grass, and stood up. For one illogical moment Steve was sure he was going to punch him, and was prepared to block.

Instead Clint passed by him, as far apart as the porch allowed, and the back door slammed behind him.

Steve stood alone on the porch. He looked back down at his phone. He could just send a text, there was no need for two awkward conversations this early in the morning.

--

Laura heard the shower running and for a split-second she panicked.

She sat up in bed, saw the bathroom light on under the door. In the next instant she remembered the house full of people - but then she doubted any of them would be using the en-suite in the master bedroom. Which left one person.

She looked at the clock. 5.16. Right around the time she normally woke up. So, maybe he hadn't been trying to sneak around unseen this time.

As she became more awake, the rest of her body came awake too. Her bladder was an insistent voice she knew better than to ignore.

They always kept it shut when the shower was running, to keep the steam in the bathroom so they wouldn't get damp or peeling wallpaper. It wasn't an unusual thing for it to be shut. Somehow, it felt different this time.

She tapped her knuckles on the door.

'I need to pee. Can I come in?'

'Shit, sorry. Just a second,' Clint said.

Laura heard the water turn off, and counted the steps between the bathtub and the door. She heard the lock on the door sliding back and then it was open, and she was facing her husband, still wet from the shower, with a towel around his hips.

She didn't have time to either admire the sight, or ask about the locked door, her bladder was in command.

As she sat down the door shut.

By the time she was done he was already dressed, his clothes sticking to damp patches of skin where he hadn't managed to dry himself completely in his mad dash to get clothed.

He was sat on the bed, pulling on socks.

'Cap's already up. I ran into him out on the porch,' he said.

There was something in his tone that made Laura wonder. She knew Natasha and Wanda had talked to Clint already, but to her knowledge Steve had not.

'I'm not gonna go back to the barn, not until tonight...' he said.

Laura sat on the bed next to him. Not too close, not right up next to him where she wanted to be, but at a safe distance.

Her hand lay palm up on the covers next to her.

She hoped he would take it. For just a little more skin to skin contact like yesterday morning.

'Alright,' she said. 'Just...don't push yourself too far.'

He wasn't looking at her, but straight ahead at the windows. Laura wasn't wholly familiar with the expression on his face. She wondered if it was how he looked when he was about to step into a battle-zone.

'Well, I'm gonna go get washed and dressed,' Laura said.

'Who's making breakfast this morning?'

'Don't think we decided, so probably me. Why?'

Clint shrugged. 'I was thinking I could mix up some pancake batter...'

'That's gonna be a whole lot of batter,' Laura said, smiling. This was the man she wanted back in control - the one who made breakfast for her and their kids, who could rock his infant son to sleep at night, and who could sleep beside her in their bed.

'I think I can handle it,' Clint said, smiling back. 'We have enough milk, right?'

'Yeah. Someone'll have to go on a grocery run later though.'

It felt good to talk of mundane things once again.

Laura stepped into the bathroom with a smile still on her face.

--

'What do you want Tony?' Natasha growled.

One of the wonderful things about sleeping at the Barton farm was the quiet, and being able to wake naturally to the sun sliding in through the curtains.

She did not appreciate it being ruined by the throb of her phone on the bedside table.

'Good morning to you as well. Believe me, I wouldn't have bothered you if a certain someone had called me back as I requested. So, what the hell are you all doing in Barton's house? Is he alright?'

'You woke me up to ask me this. Could it not have waited another two hours?' Natasha said, kicking back the covers and sitting up.

'Woke you up? What time is--...oh, I guess it is kinda early. Ok, my mistake. But about Barton...?'

'We have the situation handled,' she responded drily.

'Wait, what situation? What did he do?'

There was something almost like actual panic in his voice, and Natasha was reminded that, although he might be a dick sometimes, Tony Stark did actually care.

'He didn't do anything, whatever it is you're thinking dial it back a bit. Laura was worried about him, so she called us.'

She waited for him to process that information - to exorcise whatever fears he'd had. And Natasha didn't really want to guess at them, at all the ways Stark thought Clint might have gone off the deep end.

'Do they need anything? Anything at all?'

'Earnestness doesn't suit you, Tony.'

'Well excuse me for wanting to be a good friend. I...If I'd realised sooner that it wasn't part of--'

'Tony, we found him. We got him out. Don't go looking for fault.'

It was too early in the morning for this. Much, much too early to be reassuring Tony Stark of all people.

'I know, I know. But I should've thought to check--'

'I'm gonna hang up if I have to listen to much more of this, Tony. You know what they say about hindsight.'

There was an unintelligible grumble on the other end of the line.

'Trust me, Tony. If I thought you'd fucked up, you'd know it already.'

--

Natasha came downstairs to find Clint sitting at the kitchen table with two large bowls of pancake batter sitting on the counter behind him.

'Coffee?' Natasha asked. She didn't let on that she was surprised, or pleased, opting for normalcy - like this was any other morning when she'd stayed over.

'Sure. If you're offering.'

Natasha went through the motions of filling the coffee maker and leaving it to brew. She stifled a yawn.

'Stark called me at half five this morning,' she explained when Clint raised an eyebrow at her.

'So Steve didn't tell him to mind his own business then?'

Natasha looked at him.

'I saw Steve out on the porch earlier. Thought he was gonna call him.' Clint shrugged.

'Well evidently he didn't. So I got woken up instead.'

'Aw. Is he feeling left out?'

There was an edge to his voice; a sharp, vaguely toxic edge which Natasha didn't want to get too close to.

She chose not to answer, and seconds later Laura came down the stairs with Nate carried over one hip.

'Morning,' she said, and she was smiling bright in a way she hadn't in the days they'd been there. It was progress after all, Clint being in the house and washed and dressed and sitting at the table like nothing bad had happened to him. Natasha tried to set aside the unease and enjoy it.

--

The rest of the household began to appear after the first pancake hit the frying pan.

Wanda was dressed, her hair hurriedly towel dried, but the two Barton children were still in their pajamas. Natasha reprised her role as pancake flipper.

Clint didn't stay in the kitchen for very long, but Cooper's eyes had lit up when he saw his dad. Natasha thought he was going to try and follow him out of the room, so quickly dumped a pancake onto his plate.

When Steve appeared he looked sheepish, and Natasha fixed him with one of her best you know what you did looks before she handed him a plate.

'I'm gonna go put Nate in the sunroom,' Laura said, giving in to the whim of the wriggly baby.

The sunroom, where Clint had gone. Natasha shared a quick glance with Laura, nodding at her and smiling.

She could see Laura's thinking.

There were enough toys in the sunroom for Nate to amuse himself. All Clint really needed to do was watch to make sure he didn't kill himself by accident, and it would only be for a short time.

It had worked before after all.

--

When Laura mentioned the groceries, Steve was all set to volunteer.

Natasha beat him to it.

'Wanda and I can do it,' she said, avoiding looking in Steve's direction. Steve had no doubt that she was aware of him, however.

Steve almost opened his mouth to argue. He was the one with superstrength and the ability to reach the highest shelf in any supermarket with ease. It was obvious Natasha had an ulterior motive for leaving him alone with the Barton family, and it had something to do with Clint. He didn't want to know what she would do if Steve tried to disrupt her plan - maybe lock them in a small room together until they settled their differences.

Steve wasn't even sure what the difference she wanted him to settle with Clint was though. They'd already spoken to Laura, which had been the whole point of the trip. As far as Steve could tell his presence on the farm was pretty much redundant by this point.

He was still deep in thought when the front door shut behind Natasha and Wanda and only came out of it when Lila Barton ran up to him and tugged at his sleeve.

'We're gonna play Mario Kart,' she said. 'Please come play with us.'

It was impossible to say no.

--

Lila jumped up onto the arm of couch, next to Steve.

Cooper had already called dibs on the middle seat. Lila had wanted to sit on Daddy's lap - that way they could all fit on the couch - but Mommy had stepped in and told her that Daddy was still hurt from work, so she had to sit somewhere else.

Lila didn't mind. Steve was nice.

Thinking of Steve reminded her of her drawing, so she ran off to get it and show it to Daddy.

He said he liked it. Called her smart and mentioned something about 'saving up for art school.' She didn't get a hug though. Not even a head pat. But he sounded pleased.

Lila climbed back onto the couch.

They only had two controllers, so they split into teams and took turns.

It wasn't fair. Cooper got Daddy, and Daddy was great at video games. Steve didn't even really know how to play. Lila didn't complain though. If she complained, it might all stop.

She liked Steve though. He let her pick the character, and didn't make fun of her for picking a girl. He didn't call her bossy either when she tried to show him how to use the controller.

It was great.

And soon Steve started to get the hang of it, and he was almost as good as Daddy.

Their team started to creep up the leaderboard, but not enough to land in the top three. They finished one round of races, and then started up another.

It was one of Lila and Cooper's turns when Daddy got up and left the room. Cooper had called after him, getting up and leaving the controller on the couch.

Lila wasn't sure if they were still playing. If she was supposed to put her controller down too or if she could keep going. Cooper did it to her all the time, saying he'd pause the game while she went to the bathroom, and then she'd come back and he'd carried on.

Somehow she knew it was over; the fun they'd been having.

'I'll go talk to him,' Steve said. And then he was gone too.

Mommy told them to stay on the couch, to carry on playing. Cooper didn't want to though.

He stormed off up the stairs, and Lila heard him slam his door.

She didn't want to cry, but it happened.

--

Clint had his back to him, leaning over the porch railings.

'Clint...' Steve started. 'Clint, what happened back there?'

Instead of an answer Clint jumped over the railings and started walking across the grass, heading towards the shape of the barn.

Steve heard the sound of a slamming door from inside the house. He guessed it was Cooper. The look on the kid's face when Clint had pushed him away, when he had gotten up and walked out of the room, stuck in his mind.

He jumped over the railings and followed Clint.

'You can't keep doing this,' Steve shouted. 'You have to face this. Deal with it somehow.'

'Leave me alone, Cap,' Clint said.

'No. Damn it. Clint, this isn't like you,' Steve said.

'Yeah, well sorry to disappoint you.'

'Disappoint me? What are you--'

Clint turned around, stopping in his tracks with his fists clenched down by his side.

'They didn't even have to fucking plan it,' he snapped. 'Just waltzed by and lifted my unconscious ass straight off the sidewalk.'

'Clint, don't--'

'No! Anyone else...they wouldn't have managed it. You? You'd never have been unconscious on the sidewalk in the first place. Natasha...she'd have had them handled before they made it out of the state. Anyone else - Stark, Falcon, Wanda - they'd all have gotten out before...before...'

Clint staggered back, as if he were getting ready to turn and run.

Steve clamped a hand on his shoulder.

'Clint, just listen, alright? It doesn't matter what other--'

Clint twisted, trying to get out of the grip. Steve held on.

'Stop--'

'Let go!' Clint snarled.

'Just stop for a second! You can't carry on like this. Your kids need you to snap out of this--'

'Let go of me!'

Clint reached up with his free hand, trying to pry Steve's fingers off. Steve grabbed his wrist as well, barely registering the whimper.

'--and be there for them. I'm sorry, alright? I'm sorry this happened and we didn't get to you before you had to...do what you had to do, but--'

Clint tried to back away. It hardly took an effort on Steve's part to keep him still, he did it without thinking.

'Please, let go.'

'Clint, look, whatever happened...it doesn't matter, not to me or anyone else on the team. None of us think any less you. And your family, they care about you--'

Clint was shaking.

At first Steve thought it was anger, but the next words to come out of Clint's mouth shattered that.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll be good, sir.'

When he looked at Clint he saw an expression which almost mirrored his own for shock and horror. In fact, Clint probably looked worse, frozen in place.

'Clint, I--'

The kick came out of nowhere, lightning fast and brutal, sweeping his feet out from under him. He hit the ground hard.

Shit, Steve thought, pain radiating up his shins as he stared up at the sky. Shit.

He rolled over and scrambled to his feet.

Clint was nowhere to be seen.

Natasha is going to kill me.

Chapter Text

'What is it, Steve?'

Natasha answered the phone without looking. She'd had something she could only describe as a presentiment, a premonition, that it was Steve calling her and that he'd done something, maybe not stupid exactly, but certainly ill-advised.

She'd only just got back in the car, having filled the trunk with groceries.

'Something happened with Clint. I messed up.'

Wanda, in the seat next to her, must have sensed the change in her.

'Messed up how?' Natasha said.

'Clint, he had some sort of incident. I think it may have been a flashback. I was trying to talk to him and he...he just...'

Natasha started the car. She put the phone on speaker and pulled out of the parking lot.

'Where is he?'

'I don't know. He ran off. I didn't go after him because--'

'Probably sensible,' Natasha said. She could hear from Steve's tone that he was worried, panicked, and beating himself up for something - what exactly she could grill him about later. 'I'll be there in about forty minutes.'

She hung up before Steve could respond.

'What is happening?'

'Clint took off,' Natasha said. 'Idiots,' she added, under her breath.

The sky, which had been clear for most of the day, was peppered with swelling dark clouds promising rain showers before long.

It would be just like Clint to go and get pneumonia by hiding outside in the rain, too stubborn and too embarrassed to go back home.

--

It almost felt like she was being punished for her optimism that morning.

'I'm sorry, Laura. It's...it's my fault.'

She shook her head. It felt mechanical.

Steve was stood in front of her, looking so miserable she wanted to hug him.

When Clint had run out of the house, she'd focused on the kids. Then Cooper had gone to his room and Lila had started crying. Laura was still rubbing her back, the little girl snuggled up against her and still sniffling periodically.

'Natasha and Wanda will be back soon. They can...they can look for him,' Steve said.

He looked shaken, and when he spoke it was like he was only paying half a mind to the words coming out of his mouth. The rest of him was somewhere else, thinking of other things.

'It's fine,' she said.

Positive thinking. If you say something enough times, you can make it true.

She told herself she knew Clint would be ok. That he'd come back and maybe talk to her and finally everything would pour out.

It felt like she was beginning to understand it all. All those other times, she'd been dealing with scars. Inert tissue, already formed. This time, however, she was dealing with a wound, still festering and growing under the surface. Still burning and building.

She stroked her daughter's hair, knowing that she needed to get to her son to see how he was. The way he'd slammed his door told her he would be crying now, probably trying to muffle it with a pillow.

Nate was crawling around, gnawing on a teething ring and gurgling. He was the only member of the household still smiling.

'Lila, sweetie, are you ok now? I need to go check on your big brother, is that alright?'

She looked into her face, trying to smile. Lila's eyes were red, but dry now. Her nose was running so Laura plucked a tissue off the coffee table and wiped her face.

She turned on the television, hunting down some cartoons before she got up leaving Lila on the sofa.

'Steve, can you keep an eye on these two?' she said softly as she walked by him on her way out of the room. The guy looked like he needed a purpose, standing there like he didn't know what to do with himself.

--

'Coop, can I come in?'

She listened at the door after she knocked.

When five seconds went by without any sort of response she opened the door and stepped into the room.

It was as she'd imagined. Cooper sprawled on his bed with his face pressed into the pillow, shoulders shuddering with quiet sobs.

She went and sat on the end of his bed, not saying anything.

He tried to reign in the tears. Laura sat and waited, touched his leg lightly. He didn't pull away, the anger from before all used up.

'I don't...I don't know what I did wrong,' Cooper said, his voice wobbling.

'Oh sweetie. You didn't do anything wrong, ok? It's not your fault. Daddy's just...not well right now.'

Cooper made a noise and yanked his leg away from her hand.

'You keep saying that! What does it mean?'

'I...'

She swallowed.

'Something bad happened to your dad while he was working, and he's having some trouble dealing with it.'

It was out, she'd said it. Clint could yell at her for it later if he wanted to.

Cooper rolled over and looked at her.

'What kind of bad?'

Laura frowned.

'That's not important,' she said, wary of losing his trust but more wary of miring herself in a conversation she really didn't want to have. 'The important thing is that none of this is your fault.'

Cooper was quiet for a few moments.

'He'll get better, won't he?' he said, lifting his head.

Laura nodded. 'It might just take a little longer, and you'll need to be patient with Dad. Can you do that?'

'Yeah,' Cooper said, moving to wipe his nose on his sleeve.

Laura smiled down at him.

'Your sleeve is not a tissue, Coop. Go and clean your face,' she said.

He sighed and climbed off the bed. Laura reached out and ruffled his hair as he passed.

The first spatter of rain hit the windows. Laura pulled her cardigan closer and looked out into the grey. Clint had told her he wouldn't go back to the barn until nightfall. Laura hoped he'd rethink that position, given the changing weather, but somehow she doubted it. At the very least she hoped he'd find some sort of shelter before he got soaked.

A traumatised Clint was proving tough enough to cope with, a traumatised Clint with a cold would be a nightmare.

--

It was still only drizzling when Wanda and Natasha arrived back, but a downpour didn't seem entirely off the cards.

Natasha hadn't thought to bring a raincoat, so had to borrow one of Laura's. If there was rain, she'd assumed when packing, she'd have the luxury of watching it fall from inside a warm, comfortable home.

'Does he have any other hiding spots you know about?' Natasha asked as she zipped up the coat.

'Well, there's the kids' treehouse, and I'm pretty sure he has a couple of perches set up in the woods for target practice, but I've got no idea where exactly,' Laura said. She looked like she wanted to grab another coat and join Natasha in the search. Another set of eyes and feet would make things easier.

'Don't worry. I'll drag him back here if I have to.'

If he was hurt, cornered and confused, Clint had the potential to lash out. If he was going to lash out at anyone, Natasha would rather it be her.

She beckoned to Steve as she headed for the back door.

'So, what exactly happened?'

Steve looked down at his feet, then back at her. 'Everything seemed fine. He was playing video games with Cooper and Lila, then he just got up and left. I just wanted to talk to him, but he was going to run so I...I grabbed him.'

Natasha simply looked at him, narrowed her eyes.

'I think it triggered something - a memory. He said something to me...'

'What did he say?'

Steve shifted, his face going red. 'He said 'I'll be good, sir''

Natasha felt her stomach seem to roll, and then came the rush of anger. Not towards Steve specifically, but to the man Clint had been talking to, who had made him talk like that. She could imagine how devastating it must have been, and then to show that weakness again to the leader of their team. She needed to find Clint, fast.

'Steve, I want you and Wanda to help me look for Clint. If you find him you call me. Don't try to go near him. You've done enough already.'

--

She should have taken Tony up on the offer of assistance, Natasha thought as yet another raindrop dropped from her saturated hair onto her collarbone and trickled down the inside of her shirt. With his tech they could've had the job done already.

She kept scanning the trees, but visibility had gone to shit. She knew now it would be mostly luck if she found Clint at all. Or if he wanted to be found. She kept one hand on the phone in her pocket, hoping for the buzz of either Steve or Wanda calling in. If one of them had to find Clint she'd rather it be Wanda. Clint probably wouldn't like it, but then again he didn't like seeming weak in front of anybody - whether they viewed it as weakness or not. Still, she trusted Wanda not to do or say anything stupid which might send him spiralling again.

Steve, on the other hand. The one thing which had stopped Natasha from laying into him back on the porch had been the look on his face. He knew he'd fucked up, possibly irrevocably. Natasha suspected he even understood how. And for now that was enough.

When she first saw the marks on the trees in front of her, she thought of insects. Burrowing insects like parasites. But when she got closer she recognised them for what they were. Arrow holes. None of them were recent, but Natasha knew she was close to one of Clint's practice perches. She tried to trace a line of trajectory, examining a number of the holes, and set off into the trees.

Leaving the path in unfamiliar territory was never a good idea, and although Natasha had visited the Barton home many times over the years she'd never had much cause to venture into the woods around the property.

It was hardly the wilderness, but woods were woods. Natasha blamed the Russian in her. A cultural memory from a time of villages surrounded by dark forests, crushed under the weight of winter, with wolves always circling just beyond the treeline.

Natasha picked her way through a clearing left by a trick arrow of some sort, and spotted the perch up near the top of a beech tree. She couldn't see if it was occupied. Clint had turned it into another nest, with slanting sides with sheltered arrow slits. It didn't look especially comfortable, and it was too noticeable to be a proper sniper's nest, but for the purpose of practice or hunting it would work well enough.

When she was near the base of the tree she cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted Clint's name.

She didn't get a response.

That in itself wasn't unusual. Clint wasn't above ignoring someone and then blaming it on his hearing. And of course he might have taken his hearing aids out. If lack of sound had been used against him, then Natasha could imagine him wanting to inoculate himself against that fear.

Another possibility was that the perch was empty, but there was only one way to check for certain.

Natasha glanced about, to see if there was a ladder or even just handholds bolted onto the tree. She was out of luck, it seemed.

She had never in her life climbed a tree for fun. Clint had looked pityingly at her for that, more so than when she had admitted to him details of her tutelage in the Red Room. She suspected that, if they hadn't been in the midst of a mission in Lebanon at that moment, he would have dragged her to go and find a tree to climb.

Natasha took a run up and grabbed hold of one of the branches over her head. The bark was slippery, and her hands were soon covered in grime. She tried to imagine Clint performing the same acrobatics, and was annoyed to realise she could picture it. She moved carefully from limb to limb, every movement knocking down icy showers of raindrops.

It was not her stealthiest operation to date. She'd been cursing under her breath from somewhere around the second branch up, and the raincoat was squeaking around her. By the time she'd hauled herself up and rolled into the shelter of the perch she looked like something which had crawled out of a lake.

'Thanks for the help,' she muttered, sensing Clint.

The perch was cramped with the two of them, and Natasha was aware that she had Clint well and truly cornered. His only route of escape was through her now.

He was huddled in one corner, his arms folded over his knees.

'Nat, what are you doing?' he said, looking up at her. He sounded drained; tired and like he wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

'I could ask you the same thing,' Natasha said, ducking her head and trying to position herself so that no one part of her body was stuck out in the rain getting wet.

Clint looked at her, and then, without any further prompting on her part, he shuffled around to give her more space.

She could tell he still didn't want her there, though.

'I shouldn't have come back here,' he said at last.

'And where would you have gone instead?'

Clint shrugged. 'I don't know. Hole up in the Tower for a couple of weeks. I shouldn't have come back and put Laura and the kids through this - they don't deserve this.'

Natasha rolled her eyes.

'We both know that wouldn't have solved anything. You'd have hidden in the vents and beat yourself up for a month. And then you'd still be in the exact same position you're in now.'

She knew he wasn't convinced, but he was listening.

'Is Steve mad?' he said, not looking at her.

'Why would he be mad?'

'I kicked him,' Clint mumbled.

Steve hadn't told her that part.

'Well, that's his own fault. He should know better.'

Clint made a face and she thought he was about to try and defend Steve, to put the blame back onto himself.

'I was playing along,' he said.

Natasha waited for Clint to explain. She had her suspicions about what he meant, and she hoped she was wrong.

'He didn't get to me like that. I...I was playing along. I was trying to do what he wanted, to get him to let his guard down...'

Clint wasn't talking about Steve anymore.

'I chose to do what he wanted. He didn't make me. He didn't get into my head like that.'

'Clint...'

He wouldn't look at her. Natasha thought of the expression on Steve's face when she'd talked to him; the sick, horrified look. Clint hadn't been acting when he'd said those words, no matter what he was telling himself now.

'Clint, if Roth didn't get into your head then why did you say to Steve 'I'll be good'?'

The noise he made was like some sort of animal sound, a groan and a whine. Something pained and thoughtless.

'You've had people mess with your head before, and you got through it,' Natasha said. 'At least this time you didn't try to kill any of our colleagues and knock a multi-million dollar military installation out of commission.'

'At least Loki used me for my skills,' Clint snapped back at her. He was shaking, shivering as if from cold. It might have been the cold - the temperature had dropped once the rain started, and Clint hadn't stopped to grab a jacket when he'd run out of the house.

Natasha sighed. She didn't have a response for that one. She started on a different tack.

'So, if you played along and did what he wanted then I guess that makes everything that happened your fault, huh?'

Clint didn't take the bait. Probably because he already knew he was being stupid. Knew Natasha had seen through him.

To admit someone had broken him that way, got into his head, and given him no choice was an unforgivable weakness. He'd rather be complicit, and shoulder that guilt, than admit that he'd been powerless - even if only for a time.

Loki was a god, with power over the minds of men and plans of world domination. Roth was just a man, a pervert with too much money and time on his hands.

'I know what you're trying to do,' Clint muttered.

'And? This is common sense, not a magic trick. Think about if this happened to anyone else - to me, or Wanda - would you think we were dirty, that we let it happen, that it was our fault?'

'But it wouldn't happen to you! And Wanda...I'd almost feel sorry for the guy that tried it.'

'But what if it did? It's happened to me before...'

Clint looked at her. She saw him sizing the words up, trying to work out what she play she was making.

'That was different,' he said. 'You know that was different.'

Natasha shrugged. 'Maybe so. Doesn't change what it was though. Rape. Even when I could've snapped the guy's neck, when I could've run or walked away. I was in those situations because I had to be, not because I wanted to be. Does that make it my fault it happened? Does that make me a slut?'

Clint flinched.

'You already know the answer,' he said, glaring at her.

'So do you. So, why doesn't it apply to you?'

Clint didn't answer immediately.

'We're trained to resist torture, right? And I...I know how to take a beating. I've been doing it pretty much all of my life. But he didn't...he didn't...'

She saw his fingers sinking into the flesh of his arm, every muscle contracting, tightening up defensively.

Clint shut his eyes.

'The day before I killed him, he called me 'good boy', and I felt happy. Like, honest to god happiness and contentment. I...I wanted him to praise me again.'

He made a harsh noise in the back of his throat and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

'...I could have killed him before that. I had chances. But I--'

'Would any of these chances have ended with you getting killed by Roth's henchmen?'

'Uh...'

'Then they don't count. You did the right thing. It doesn't matter if you don't believe it right now, you will eventually. Just ask Laura what she'd rather have; a dead husband, or you. If you seriously think she'd want the former, then you're a lot dumber than I thought.'

There was the faint hint of a smile on Clint's face, but it was quickly gone. Natasha took advantage of the lull to check her phone and text Steve and Wanda that she'd found Clint.

She caught Clint stealing a look at the phone.

'Shit, I didn't realise you'd all come out looking in the rain...' he said.

'What did you expect us to do?'

Clint shrugged.

He'd moved since Natasha had first entered the perch. Now they were sitting side by side. Looking at the phone screen had brought him even closer, and Natasha no longer had the feeling that he wanted her out.

'You're right.'

He said it so softly it was like he was talking to himself, but she knew otherwise. His breath hitched a little and he looked at her.

'A-about what happened...you're right, but I can't--I made it so easy for him.'

'No. You survived. Roth was a murderer - if you'd kept on resisting he probably would have got bored, had you killed and dumped in the ocean.'

The look on Clint's face told her he hadn't known that.

'Seriously?'

Natasha nodded.

'He had his personal assistant killed after he accused him of rape, but managed to cover it up. I suspect there were others as well.'

'Shit...'

He went quiet, looking out into the woods where the light was fading and the rain was coming down harder than before.

'The first time it happened he had me tied up and blindfolded. I'd been like that for a few hours already, before he started. I couldn't hear him, so the first thing I know is his knee coming down on the side of the bed and him pulling off my clothes.'

She noticed him rubbing his forearm, thumb moving in short circles over the skin.

'Nothing I could do about it.

'He didn't put my hearing aids back in at all during that one. Just left when he was done. At one point I thought maybe it had been a hallucination...' He shook his head. 'Kinda hard to hallucinate all the leftovers though. It was another hour or so before someone came and cleaned me off.

'You tell none of this to Laura,' he said. The look he gave her was halfway between commanding and pleading.

Natasha gave him her word and Clint sank back in relief.

If either of them had been smokers, this might have been the moment when they lit up one cigarette and shared it between the two of them, renewing their bond.

Instead Natasha copied Clint, and leaned back against the rough wall of the perch. They were only just touching one another.

'I'm guessing Laura asked you to bring me back dead or alive, outlaw style.'

'Pretty much.'

'Do you mind if we just sit here for a while? Give the rain a chance to maybe stop...'

When Natasha shrugged her shoulder bumped his. He didn't flinch away, instead she felt him lean towards her a little. They didn't speak, just watched the rain falling through the trees together.

Chapter Text

'Do you mind if I sleep with your husband?'

Laura looked up.

She hadn't heard Natasha on the stairs, hadn't heard her in the hallway, and certainly hadn't heard her entering the room.

It took her a few seconds to realise what she was being asked, and another few to work out what Natasha really meant.

The barn. The nest. If Clint was struggling at night, then Natasha was the best person to deal with it. She was far less likely to get hurt trying to calm him down.

Clint would never forgive himself for hurting Laura, even accidentally. She could easily imagine what would happen if he woke up to find her with a split lip, or busted nose or bruises around her throat. No number of apologies would be enough for him to let it go.

She shook her head. Under different circumstances she might have said something cute like give him back when you're done. But that seemed kind of bad taste in the current moment.

She shifted her grip on Nate, the baby currently glued to her breast for his evening feed.

'Where is Clint?'

'Downstairs. Apologising to the kids, I think.'

Laura sat up a little straighter. The look of alarm must have been clear on her face.

'He's alright for now,' Natasha said. 'He wanted to talk to them.'

Laura settled down and nodded. She was a little worried about Clint finding out that she'd talked to Cooper already, but she had good reasons and she was prepared to argue her point.

'We missed you guys at dinner,' Laura said.

It had been hours between Wanda and Steve turning up damp and muddy at the backdoor and saying Natasha had it covered, and Natasha and Clint coming back.

'I'll throw something together later. I'll make him eat, don't worry.'

Laura smiled.

When Clint had first introduced her to the beautiful, ex-Russian assassin Laura had felt the slither of jealousy in her chest.

Natasha Romanov got to see a side of her husband she would never get to see, got to spend more time with him in far-away places, adrenaline pulsing and death-defying situations. If that wasn't a recipe for an affair, she didn't know what was. And what kind of woman wouldn't be nervous about her husband partnering up with someone code-named The Black Widow?

For the best part of a year she'd been wary, always on guard when Natasha was around.

Then Clint had been stabbed and ended up in medical for over a week, and Natasha had called her every day with updates. It wasn't the behaviour of the coldhearted seductress Laura had taken her for.

When Laura had been pregnant with Cooper and Clint had been half a world away, Natasha had checked in, made sure she had everything she needed. Laura didn't learn until later how hard it must have been for Natasha to see her like that, even complaining about her feet and how often she needed to pee, knowing that she would never have the same experience. After that, she hadn't had any more problems about opening up her family to Natasha. And now it was hard to imagine life without her.

Laura suspected Clint had some sort of pact with Natasha, a 'if I die, promise me you'll look after my wife for me' kind of deal. Even if the worst happened, Laura knew their family would be safe.

--

Steve hadn't meant to eavesdrop but it was hard not to with his enhanced hearing.

He could have directed his focus elsewhere, he supposed, but once he heard Clint's voice it was like he was locked-in.

The fact that Natasha hadn't tried to beat the shit out of him when she got back told him things were not as bad as he'd thought. Clint had given him a stiff look, before immediately looking away and the slight flicker that seemed to pass through his left arm told Steve he probably wanted to punch him. Steve had had visions of Clint, curled up in the woods somewhere, lost in his memories and well and truly separated from reality, so seeing him like this was a relief.

He'd made himself scarce after that, sketching to try and reorganise his mind. Then he'd heard Clint.

'Hey, guys.'

The sound of the television immediately vanished. No complaints.

Clint's voice was soft, sheepish, pained.

'I wanted to say I'm sorry about earlier, about how I've been lately - how I'm not spending much time with you two. It's not fair on you guys, and I'm really sorry.'

Steve heard Cooper mumble that it was ok, that they didn't mind. It stung hearing a child say that, and Steve could only imagine how it hurt for Clint.

'I'm sorry I haven't been able to hug you, and it's got nothing to do with you. I love you. Both of you. And that hasn't changed, I promise. Do you understand?'

There were mumbles of assent, slightly confused and scared.

'Something happened last time I was at work, and...and it means that right now I don't really want to be touched.'

Clint had asked him to let go. Begged him.

He listened as Clint reassured his kids that it wasn't their fault, that as soon as he got over it they'd be the first to know, that he loved them.

'But we could cover up, like this, and then we wouldn't be touching you' Lila said, her voice becoming muffled. Steve imagined her taking the throw off of the back of the couch and shrouding herself in it - a little ghost wrapped in tartan.

He heard the heartbreak in Clint's voice when he had to respond.

'That's a great idea, sweetie, but I don't think its gonna work.'

'Lila, it's bath-time,' said Wanda, from somewhere around the stairs.

Steve heard the start of a protest, silenced by Clint telling her to go on upstairs and he'd see her tomorrow. Her father's voice worked on her like a magic spell, and then Clint was alone with his eldest.

'If you're mad at me, I get it. I should've been honest with you...'

'I'm not mad,' Cooper said.

'You know I can still tell when you're lying, right? It's fine.'

'You scared Mom...'

'I know, buddy. I'm sorry. You did a great job looking after her, your sister and baby brother though.'

The praise seemed to drain some of the anger out of the child.

He started to talk about things that had happened during Clint's last absence - the books he'd read, new games he'd made up for himself and his sister, the latest developments in the saga of the squirrels whose den he could see from his bedroom window.

Steve had never heard Cooper talk so much in one go, and Clint listened, commenting and encouraging in the right places. The squirrel conversation had clearly happened before. Clint knew all of the names Cooper had assigned them.

'Are you ok dad?'

The happy chatter ground to a halt.

Steve didn't hear Clint respond.

He was about to get up and go an check when he heard Natasha's voice.

'Isn't it almost your bedtime, kid?'

Steve pulled the sketchpad back onto his lap, trying to focus on the page in front of him. If anyone walked by, he could pretend he'd been lost in thought rather than listening in.

--

'Thanks for the save,' Clint said, looking up at Natasha from the couch.

'Anytime,' Natasha answered. 'You were doing good there though.'

'Uh-huh. Right up until I almost burst into tears over Trixie the fucking squirrel.'

He looked and sounded emotionally wrung out, which wasn't really surprising.

'We missed dinner. I'm gonna put on some pasta. You want any?'

The grimace on his face told her he didn't. But she knew he hadn't eaten since morning.

He sat up and looked at her.

'Are you gonna make me even if I say no?'

The words were loaded, the challenge clear on his face.

'No,' Natasha said, from the kitchen. 'You're an adult. You can make your own decisions. Even if they are stupid.'

She heard him get up off the couch, padding across the floor towards her.

'Give,' he muttered, reaching for the saucepan she'd just taken out. She humoured him and handed it over.

'I can manage pasta,' he said, opening one of the cabinets. 'Go have a shower. You look like you got dragged through a hedge backwards...'

'Wow, thanks.'

He smirked at her. 'Just being honest,' he said.

She sent a mock glare his way before she went upstairs, but he was already focused on what he was doing.

--

'Fuck...'

The curse was quiet, almost hidden under his breath, but Steve heard it.

He'd been about to head on up to his room when he heard Clint's voice from the kitchen.

Natasha had been gone almost ten minutes. Steve no longer heard the shower running overhead, so he assumed she would be back soon.

If Clint had sounded angry, Steve might have been able to ignore it.

When he got near the kitchen he could smell tomato, basil, oregano, onions, bacon - the key components of the pasta dish Clint was working on.

He didn't see Clint at first, not until he looked down on the floor.

Clint was sitting on the floor, his back to the cabinets, a hand pressed over his mouth like he wanted to be sick. His other hand seemed to be counting. As Steve got closer he saw his fingers moving, tapping against his knee, counting down finger by finger.

He didn't look up until Steve was in the archway. When he did he started signing, finger-spelling F U C K O F before Steve stopped looking.

He crossed the kitchen, took the basin out of the sink and pushed it into Clint's lap.

'If you're going to be sick, do it already. You'll feel better.'

Clint waved his hand at him in a gesture Steve translated as I'm fine.

Steve sighed, trying to listen for Natasha.

He wanted to apologise for grabbing Clint earlier on, but now didn't seem like such a good time.

Clint took his hand away from his mouth and leaned his head forward, but he didn't throw up.

'I'm good,' he mumbled, shoving the basin away and getting to his feet.

He looked at the hob and the sauce-covered pasta with contempt.

'...it was the smell...' he said. 'The oregano, or something...just for a moment...' He shook his head, turning off the heat and getting out bowls and cutlery while Steve stood watching.

'A flashback?'

Clint looked at him sharply, didn't answer.

'If you're getting flashbacks then you should see someone...'

'Yeah, me and shrinks don't really get along too good,' Clint muttered.

Steve knew that Clint had had psychological evaluations before from his SHIELD files. They were less than informative though, usually consisting of a few lines stating that Clint had turned up and had passed the evaluation.

'What about talking to Sam Wilson?'

Clint had picked up his bowl of pasta and sat down at the table to eat. He seemed to delay his answer, deliberately taking his time chewing. Or maybe it really was taking all his concentration to eat. Steve had picked up that Clint wasn't eating like he should be, although he wasn't entirely sure why - he didn't really want to think about all the reasons why Clint was now so reluctant to put anything in his mouth.

'Are you ordering me?'

Steve frowned. 'If that's what I need to do then--'

'Hey Nat, ready for the slumber party?'

Clint looked past him, towards Natasha who had appeared dressed in a hoodie and pajama pants, with a bundle of folded blankets under her arm. She glanced at Steve, then at Clint, before dropping the blankets on the table and sitting down.

'I'm spending the night in the barn,' she explained to Steve.

'Gotta make sure I don't try to murder anyone in my sleep...' Clint said.

Steve couldn't help but remember the bathtub with the man folded over it, the bodies split open and skulls pounded almost to mush. And Clint was looking at him like he knew exactly what he was thinking about.

'I'll leave you guys to it,' Steve said. He didn't blame Clint for being hostile. He hoped tomorrow things could be different.

--

The pasta was a little undercooked and the sauce came out of a jar, but as far Clint cooking went it wasn't bad.

Natasha was pleased to see him eating almost normally, without hesitancy.

She'd listened in on some of his and Steve's discussion, stepping in when she heard Clint starting to get agitated. Steve had a point about Sam, but he'd picked the wrong moment to suggest it.

They ate in silence, until Clint got up to wash his bowl at the sink.

'Have you got socks? It gets pretty cold out there.'

Natasha extended a leg and showed off her fluffy powder blue socks.

She got a tired smile, and when she was done eating Clint carried the blankets out to the barn.

--

Clint knew his way through the dark, but switched on the lantern for Natasha's convenience. They agreed to keep it on, with the light turned right down, to minimise the chances of a nightmare turning into a brawl.

Natasha set up her bed close to Clint's. He'd used the word 'slumber party', and to Natasha that meant teen girls giggling and braiding each other's hair, talking about boys and maybe getting chased around the house by a drill-wielding maniac. She had to admit though, once there were enough blanket layers between her and the wood floor, that there was something kind of nice about the whole thing. She guessed this was one of the things she had missed out on with her lack of a childhood. She didn't even mind the cold.

Chapter Text

Laura was only just up when she heard the backdoor open. She swung her legs out of bed and hurried out of the room.

She came downstairs to find Clint and Natasha in the kitchen.

Natasha was fumbling with the coffee maker, while Clint was resting his head on the kitchen table.

'So, how did it go?' she asked.

Clint looked up at her and rubbed his eyes.

'Could have gone worse,' he said. 'She didn't have to hit me, so that counts as a win I guess.' He broke off with a yawn.

Natasha rolled her eyes.

'If you ignore the fact that you were supposed to sleep...'

Clint looked at Natasha like a kid whose sibling had just dobbed them in to a parent. Laura tried not to let on that she was disappointed, but she was sure he would pick up on it regardless. She knew that before too long Natasha would have to leave, and then it would all be up to her again.

'You didn't sleep at all?' she asked.

Clint smiled at her. A please don't be mad at me kind of smile.

'Maybe an hour,' he admitted.

'Clint, go sleep,' Laura said, sighing. 'I'll wake you up in two hours. Same to you Natasha. I'm not dealing with the two of you being grouchy all day 'cause you didn't sleep.' She finished by folding her arms, to show she was serious.

Clint looked at her and flashed her a hand sign. A fist with two fingers extended, thumb pressed over the remaining fingers. I love you.

He got up from the kitchen table, surprising Laura when he headed for the stairs rather than the back door, presumably to sleep in their bed.

Natasha stayed where she was, as if guarding the coffee maker.

'I'm fine,' she said. 'I just need coffee.'

'Upstairs. Now. I'll come get you later,' Laura said, not moving from her stern pose.

Natasha didn't argue, slinking off upstairs.

Laura smiled to herself, rolling the sleeves of her nightgown up past her elbows, and got started on breakfast.

--

It was a rare thing for Clint to manage to get the bed all to himself.

The brief nap three days earlier was the last time he could remember - and on that occasion he'd passed out on the end of the bed like a cat, instead of taking full advantage of the opportunity.

The covers were rumpled, and the sheets were still warm from Laura's body. He stretched out diagonally across the bed, so he could rest his head on her pillow. It smelt like her, and that made all the difference. He shut his eyes and thought Yeah, I can do this, reached up and took out his hearing aids and put them on the bedside table.

He pulled the covers up, trying to latch onto the smell - of Laura, of the detergent they used - and used it to centre himself in the silence. It worked, just about.

--

She could get used to this.

Cooper would do the washing up no more than twice per week, anymore and she had to bribe him. Lila was too small to really reach the sink, so that ruled her out for now. When Clint was home, and functioning, they'd alternate. In any case, Laura usually ended up doing a lot of washing up.

With Steve around though, she'd hardly had to do any of it at all.

And Wanda was proving an excellent babysitter. She had Nate with her now, amusing him with red sparks which he giggled at and tried to grab.

Steve had remarked on the lack of Natasha, and the kids had asked about their dad, so Laura had to tell them.

'I wanna sleep in the barn with Daddy too,' Lila had said, until her brother told her there'd be spiders in the barn, spiders who would drop down while she sleeping and crawl over her face. Lila had squealed and dropped the subject.

Laura considered the idea of all of them crammed into the hayloft in sleeping bags. It was temptingly cosy, but then there were the practicalities. It was cold. Someone was bound to end up with splinters. The dust probably wasn't great for anyone's lungs, especially an infant. Then there was the ladder. It was not an especially high drop, but it was high enough to count. It wasn't necessarily the drop that did the damage, but the landing. Clint had often reminded her of that, usually in an attempt to ward off her wrath when she heard about his latest disagreement with gravity. She'd have to bring up the spiders herself if Lila suggested the idea again.

--

She was still an hour or so out on the two hour mark when she decided to go get washed and dressed herself.

Laura eased the bedroom door open.

She couldn't see much of Clint - part of his head, an ear and a foot - sprawled out across the bed with most of his upper body on her side of the bed. She saw the hearing aids sitting on the bedside table though and headed on into the bathroom, happy she wouldn't wake him up.

She turned on the shower, letting it run until the water heated up before she stepped under it.

In the SHIELD days she'd known that there were psych teams on hand. She doubted Clint told them much, beyond what he thought was necessary, but it had always made her feel confident that when he was home he was ready to be home. She wondered about giving Tony a call, since he seemed to provide a lot of the money for the Avengers, and suggesting it as an idea for the future.

When she came out of the bathroom she was wrapped in a towel, her hair piled up on top of her head in a messy bun.

She only passed by him. But the movement of the air was enough to catapult him into wakefulness.

He was off the bed and up against the wall by the window before she could draw breath.

The move had been purely defensive, but the viper speed of it left Laura slightly sick.

Sorry, she signed, repeating it several times. With one hand holding the towel she was somewhat limited in what she could say to him.

Clint shook his head.

'You don't need to...' he said, struggling to find the right volume at first.

She wondered if his heart was beating as fast as hers.

He was out the door before she could try to say anything else. It wasn't until she started to get dressed that she saw the hearing aids still on the bedside table.

--

Steve was the only adult downstairs when Clint stumbled into the living room looking miserable. It was actually just him and Nate at that moment in time. Lila and Cooper had been told to go do an hour of schoolwork, and Wanda had only just left to go to the bathroom. The baby was propped up on the couch next to him, holding one of his hands hostage. Apparently his fingers were infinitely more fascinating than all the brightly-coloured, multi-textured toys lying around. Nate was currently investigating whether or not they were edible.

Clint spotted Steve, looked like he wanted to disappear, then saw Nate and furrowed his brow.

'Help?' Steve asked.

Clint blinked, and then put a hand up to his ear. He cursed, little more than a whisper, and grimaced. He looked at Nate again and his expression softened.

Nate only had a few teeth, but the ones he did have were sharp like flint. It felt a little like he was being chewed on by a very small, adorable, chubby-cheeked shark.

Clint didn't look at him again, stepping into the living room and scanning the floor.

He crouched and picked something up.

It was one of Nate's toys. A multi-coloured monster with a ruff of purple fur and different textures on each of its limbs.

Clint swivelled around, bringing the toy into Nate's line of sight.

The response was instantaneous. Nate's mouth popped open, and Steve quickly withdrew his hand. There were little red teeth-marks all around his index finger.

'Ruh...ruh,' Nate gurgled, grabbing the toy. 'Da...'

Clint smiled, looking more relaxed than he had a few moments ago. The warmth behind the expression took Steve by surprise - he was so used to the sarcastic or lopsided smirks he usually got from Clint. It was gone seconds later, when Clint got up.

'Thanks,' Steve said, and Clint started to turn away. Before he could move away though, Steve continued, signing expansively to catch his attention. 'Uh, actually I need to talk to you about--'

He knew his signing was all correct, so that wasn't the reason for the look Clint was giving him.

The downstairs toilet flushed, and Steve knew he probably had around a minute before Wanda came back.

'--about important things,' he finished lamely.

Twenty minutes, Clint signed. Meet me in the barn.

He was gone before Wanda stepped back into the room.

--

Steve considered waking Natasha up to ask advice. If that wasn't a sign that he was panicking then he didn't know what was.

Wanda gave him odd looks in between trying to teach Nate Sokovian, while the baby babbled back at her, and he wasn't entirely sure she wasn't reading his mind. Especially considering the next thing she said to him.

'Just talk to him. Like human being,' she said, rolling her eyes. She saw the disapproving look on his face and rolled her eyes again. 'Relax, I am not using my powers on you. I made educated guess - like detective.'

Steve wasn't entirely convinced, and certainly didn't like being so transparent.

'What do you think I should say to him?'

Wanda shrugged. 'Whatever you need to say. Or perhaps he needs to talk to you.'

Steve certainly hadn't been getting that impression from Clint - rather the opposite.

About five minutes before he was about to get up and go find Clint, Laura came downstairs. Steve mentioned to her about her son's apparent preference for human flesh, although the marks had long since faded.

'Oh, I know all about the teeth,' Laura said. 'Can't wait for him to be on solid food. Have either of you seen Clint?'

Steve told her he had, mentioned his valuable assistance in returning Steve's hand, and said Clint had gone outside to the barn. When he told her the last part a pained look came over her face and she looked at the floor. Steve would have heard if they'd argued, but something had clearly happened.

--

Stepping into the barn felt a little like stepping into a villain's lair.

There was that same jolt of anticipation, apprehension - Steve found himself shutting the door behind him.

Clint was sat on top of a stack of crates, up out of reach, although if Steve had really wanted to he could have gotten to him. He got the message though - I'm up here 'cause I don't trust you. It stung a bit more than he thought.

Clint looked down at him and cocked his head to one side, as if to say get on with it, I'm listening.

He had a different set of hearing aids in from normal - Steve thought he recognised them as prototypes Stark had come up with a while back. Clint hadn't liked them for some reason, but evidently he'd kept them as spares.

'I wanted to apologise...for how I handled things yesterday,' Steve said.

Clint furrowed his brow and Steve felt like he was under closer observation.

'I...I should have listened when you told me to let go. I'm sorry.'

Clint was still looking at him in that sharp, hawkish way.

'Is that it?' he said.

Steve nodded.

In the next instant Clint's shoulders sagged and he covered his face in his hands. He shook, and for a second Steve thought he'd snapped and started sobbing, but when he looked up he was grinning. Steve still thought he might have snapped.

'Seriously? I thought you were gonna fire me,' Clint said.

'Why would I do that?' Steve said.

'I thought murder was generally frowned upon in superhero circles,' Clint said.

'Murder? Jesus, Clint...you can't...that wasn't...'

Clint just carried on looking down at him, challenging him to argue.

'The security guys, yeah, that was self-defence there. But the other guy, the one in charge...I didn't have to do anything to him. Once his pet thugs were out of the way he was pretty much defenceless. I didn't have to kill him - I wanted to.'

Steve swallowed, trying not to picture it in his mind.

'I don't care about that, Clint, I know--'

'Could've fooled me,' Clint muttered.

Steve opened his mouth to ask, and Clint answered before he could get a word out.

'The second I told you it wasn't my blood, it was like you didn't want to know me. You dumped me on Vision. Vision! Of all fucking people. You hand me off to the robot who's been alive only a few weeks longer than my third kid, who could tell you the word 'tact' in sixty different languages but has no idea what it means in practice.'

Steve remembered coming back to the jet to find Clint sedated and Vision looking unsettled.

'I believe we should get him medical attention as soon as possible,' he had said, but by the time they'd got back to the compound Clint had been awake, pissed off, and insisting he was fine. Steve had left him with Natasha then. That had been the last time he had seen Clint - when he'd found out three days later that Clint had gone home he'd thought that would be the end of it. That the next time they met it'd be work-related and Clint would be fine again and there'd be no reason for either of them to think about what had happened.

'I'm still mad at him for drugging me by the way,' Clint continued. 'He isn't off the hook for that one, you can tell him that. If he asked beforehand, I didn't hear him and someone needs to tell him that a lack of 'no' does not equal consent.

'And then you ignore me...for, what is it now? Three weeks? Like we're schoolgirls who fell out 'cause I told you your top was ugly or something.

'I know the only reason you're here now is 'cause of Natasha. Because you don't want to have to deal with me, because it's too difficult. And that sucks, but I get it. Can't say I blame you for that. So you can leave. It's not like it really matters - I'm pretty much retired, so as long as the rest of you don't fuck up too badly you won't have to deal with me again. I'll tell Natasha everything's patched up between us. So go.'

Before he'd stepped foot in the barn Steve had told himself that he would listen to Clint and do what he said - if he asked him to back off, he'd back off - but now he knew he couldn't.

'Clint, you're my friend,' Steve said, looking up at him. 'I'll be honest. What you did...it scared me.'

'That makes two of us,' Clint said, his posture stiff, like he was bracing himself for bad news.

'But I handled things badly. I failed you, and I apologise for that.'

'Jesus, Cap. I feel like I just punched a puppy or something. Alright, apology accepted.' Clint sighed and looked at his hands. He looked like he was thinking something over, getting the words in the right order before he next opened his mouth.

'Y'know, all I really needed from you was a 'gee, Clint, glad you're still alive.' That's it. I didn't need you to lie, to forgive me or absolve me. I didn't - and still don't - need a pep talk from Captain America. I know you're pissed about the mess I left, but I just needed...just needed you to say those words.'

Steve frowned, sure he must have said something to Clint when they found him. He thought back to that moment, remembered assessing the room for threats, before crouching down in front of Clint ready to try and staunch the flow of blood, wherever it was coming from.

'Not my blood,' Clint had said, before Steve could touch him. His voice had sounded odd, too loud, and then he had pointed towards the elevator with the severed finger on its floor, and Steve had called Sam and Vision...

He hadn't said anything to him.

Nothing.

'If it means anything now,' Steve said, 'I am glad you're still alive.'

Clint didn't respond immediately, but the silence felt less accusatory than it had before.

'Are we done now? These things give me a headache - I can hear your fucking heartbeat and it's annoying as hell,' Clint said, gesturing to the prototype hearing aids.

'Why did you keep them?' Steve asked, trying to keep his smile hidden. He remembered Clint whining and Tony bitching right back - it had been a pleasant, otherwise uneventful day at the Tower.

'Because they were free,' Clint said, as if it were obvious, removing them from his ears. As he held them in his palm, checking to make sure they were off, he said something else.

'It was me cracking that son of a bitch's skull open that was the issue right? It wasn't me getting fucked in the ass? Because if it was the second one, I don't want to hear about it. Ever. You can deal with that on your own.'

When Clint looked up, it was like he'd never spoken, like Steve had only imagined those barbed, few sentences.

While Steve was stood there gaping, Clint stood up and jumped from the crate, catching a beam and swinging up into the hayloft in a way that had Steve thinking Oh yeah, circus.
It was a clear dismissal.

Chapter Text

Natasha put on her fluffy socks and went out to the barn again that night.

She came bearing food - homemade pizza pockets - and the hearing aids Clint had left in the house.

After their one-on-one Steve had come back looking perplexed and then, as the hours passed, a dawning misery had come down on him as Clint failed to appear in the house.

Natasha made him tell her everything. It didn't take all that much effort as far as interrogations went, although Steve looked distinctly embarrassed when he told her Clint's closing remarks. Natasha knew he was not the naively, patriotic robot some people took him for, but she could see how Clint's reaction had thrown him for a loop.

They'd talked up in Natasha's room, while the rest of the household went about getting ready for bed.

'I think...I think maybe he's right,' Steve had said, voicing the end to some train of thought Natasha could only guess at.

'About what?' she asked, getting changed into the thick hoodie and fleeced pajama pants she'd worn the night before night. Steve didn't notice.

'I didn't think I'd ever have to deal with something like that, not with my own team. I knew it happened to...to men sometimes, but I didn't think...'

She felt bad for him; hadn't seen him so lost and confused looking since they'd told him Neo-Nazis were a thing.

'Steve,' she said, touching him lightly on the shoulder, 'go easier on yourself. Learn from your mistakes.'

It seemed to work, and when he left her room he looked a little less like a condemned man and a bit more like the Steve Rogers she knew. If only everyone could be so accommodating, she thought.

If only more things could be solved by a punch to the head.

She'd taken a flashlight with her, morse-coding a message up into the darkness of the hayloft before she ascended the ladder.

Clint was curled up in his nest, his eyes reddened, looking at something in his hand. She knew he'd seen her, even if he didn't acknowledge her, because he put whatever he'd been looking at into a shoebox and shoved it aside. Natasha caught a glimpse of the sheen of a photograph before the lid shut.

Natasha knew better than to try and sign with him when he was in this kind of mood, instead holding his hearing aids out in front of him.

He glanced past her, at the container with the pizza pockets in. She'd brought along a few bottles of water too, to replenish his stash.

'After,' she said, making sure he saw her lips.

He nodded, flicking on the hearing aids once they were in place. Natasha wasn't sure how long he'd been sat there in the quiet, either punishing or challenging himself - and those two things often seemed very similar from her perspective.

'...I was kind of a bitch to Steve...' was the first thing he said.

Natasha took the lid off the plastic container and slid it in front of him.

'Eat,' she said.

'I don't even know why I said it,' he mumbled.

'Well, you do have a certain aptitude for self-sabotage,' Natasha said.

'I...I didn't even really mean it. Well, I guess I did but...oh, I don't know. I'm just a fucking mess at the moment,' He fiddled with the edge of the box, looking over the contents without much enthusiasm.

Natasha had her theories; about trust issues and father figures, masking vulnerability through isolation, but she doubted he would appreciate hearing about it.

She busied herself with remaking her makeshift bed, glancing around every so often to check he was still eating.

He finished one of the three pockets, managed half of a second, and then gave up. Natasha ate the last one.

The wind had picked up, taking the temperature down with it.

Clint pulled on a sweatshirt and put the hood up, wrapping himself up in the blankets of his nest. Natasha copied him, although the cold wind affected her much less.

She shut her eyes. After a few minutes she relaxed her breathing, pretending to slip into sleep. She wasn't sure if he could tell she was faking or not, but if he could he didn't call her out.

After an hour or so she heard his breathing start to change, finally settling into a rhythm she recognised as sleep. She listened too to the nightmares when they came, rolling in like waves.

He barely made any noise, but his breathing and involuntary movements gave him away. She liked to think that was something he'd learnt at SHIELD, but suspected it came from further back. Their childhoods had been very different, but a lot of the effects seemed to be the same.

The fifth nightmare must have been worse than the others. It woke him up.

She was ready in case he panicked, but otherwise she stayed where she was, feigning sleep still. A few seconds passed and then she heard him call her name.

'Nat...?'

It was hesitant, as if wary of waking her up.

'I'm here,' she said.

He didn't reply, but she heard his frightened breathing start to calm down. She heard him shifting in the dark, rolling back over in order to burrow down into the blankets again.

He fell asleep again minutes later. This time Natasha followed him.

--

Laura put the pen and notebook down on the arm of the chair next to Clint.

'I need a list of foods,' she said. 'The ones you can't eat or be near right now.'

He looked at her, then down at the blank page. He started to nudge it away.

'Laura, I don't want to be a problem--'

'And I want you to be able to eat dinner with us again. I can download some new recipes, give something new a try. I'm a resourceful cook, Clint, I can work around this - but I need to know what things to avoid.'

He couldn't fight against her logic, and yet he still looked torn. She realised then, in order to make the list he would have to remember every time his captor had offered him food.

'You don't have to do all of it now,' she said, softening her voice.

She wished she could have waited, or spared him entirely, but after what had happened that morning she knew she had to do something.

He'd made it to the table, even if he was only eating toast. Laura had been setting down big plates in the middle for everyone to help themselves. She was almost done, just one big plate of scrambled eggs to go. She set it down in the only space left, right up in front of where Clint was sitting, turned around to look for a serving spoon and heard the sharp, quick scrape of a chair.

It had been almost an exact recreation of what had happened almost a week ago when he'd tried to eat with them, right up to the muffled sound of him throwing up in the downstairs bathroom.

'No, I'll get it over with,' Clint said. 'Like tearing off a band-aid, right?' he added, with a smile.

--

Lila heard Cooper stop counting.

The kitchen cabinets were out. She couldn't fit in them anymore - the last time she'd tried Cooper had found her before she could make space, and Mommy had gotten mad about the mess. Hiding under the kitchen table never worked either. It was the first place Cooper checked.

She looked at the back door.

The rules were 'don't leave the house'. But the porch was part of the house.

It wasn't cheating. It was the sort of thing Auntie Nat would do.

Lila darted over to the door.

She was sneaky, moving slow and quiet, opening the door, slipping through it and pulling it closed just as gently as she possibly could.

Daddy was sat on the porch. He had a pen and paper and seemed to be writing something.

'What're you doing?' she asked.

He looked at her.

'Nothing important,' he said. He flipped the notebook closed. 'What're you doing?'

'Playing hide-and-seek.'

'Oh. Are you supposed to be hiding?'

She was. But the game seemed boring now.

'Are you feeling better now?' she asked.

She wondered why Daddy was up and outside when he was sick. When she was sick, Mommy made her stay in bed and brought her plenty of drinks and if she threw up she rubbed her back and got her cleaned up really quick so she could go back to sleep. Maybe Daddy didn't need all of that because he was a grown-up.

'Yeah. Better now, sweetie. Hey, come sit over here.'

He tapped the deck next to him.

'There, now have I told you about lines of sight?'

Lila shook her head.

'Basically, it's how far you can see in a given direction. Where you were standing before, anyone in the kitchen could see you through the window, but now...'

'I'm hidden!'

He smiled.

'Got it.'

She beamed back at him. With how she was positioned now even if her brother came out onto the porch, he wouldn't be able to see her.

Daddy opened up the notebook again.

Lila looked, but couldn't read any of it. That was ok though. Even Mommy struggled to read Daddy's writing. He sent them postcards sometimes when he was working, and Mommy would have to stop and squint at some of the words even though Mommy was a good reader.

She listened to the sounds from inside the house, trying to track where Cooper was. It sounded like he was still on the upstairs.

'Is it just you two playing?'

'No. Wanda and Captain America are playing too, and Auntie Nat. We're playing with rules though.'

They'd played hide-and-seek with Auntie Nat before. She always won. She was also the reason for the time limit rule, after even Lila and Cooper's combined efforts hadn't been enough and they were forced to admit defeat and two and a half hours of searching. Rounds of hide-and-seek in the Barton house had a half hour time limit now.

There was a triumphant cry from overhead.

'Sounds like Cooper found Steve,' Daddy said. 'Kinda hard not to though. Not a lot of places a guy that big can hide.'

Lila giggled.

A crow landed on the grass several feet away, and she watched it hobbling about. She liked their feathers and the way they shone in the sunlight.

Daddy kept on writing.

When she looked at him he had on a strange face, but when he saw her looking it disappeared and he looked normal again.

Then she heard footsteps thundering downstairs and through the kitchen. She heard the cabinets banging open and shut. She ducked down next to Daddy and covered her mouth.

The backdoor opened.

'Hey, Dad, did Lila come out here?'

She held her breath while she waited for Daddy to answer.

'Nope, haven't seen her. What's up?'

'Playing hide-and-seek. I've just got to find Lila and Auntie Nat.'

'Hmm. You checked everywhere in the house?'

Lila tried not to squeal. She almost wanted to jump up, just to see the look on Cooper's face. But the timer was counting down. She could win if she just kept still. Still and quiet.

The door shut again and she heard Cooper run off. She couldn't hold in the giggle anymore, it came out. She almost grabbed Daddy's arm, but then she remembered how he'd asked them not to touch him until he said it was ok.

She went back to watching her crow, and Daddy went back to writing. He kept making that face from time to time. Lila didn't know what it meant. It wasn't a happy face, and it wasn't a mad face, and she wasn't sure what the writing had to do with it. She didn't like it though.

She heard her brother calling her name inside the house, like the game was over. The timer on the kitchen table hadn't gone off yet though, so she knew he was trying to trick her.

Daddy stopped writing. His hand was all shaky and it was making all the letters more messy. His other hand was over his mouth.

'Daddy?'

'I'm ok, pumpkin. Honest,' he said, looking at her. His voice sounded kinda rough and weird. She wanted him to pick her up, all of a sudden, pick her up so she was sat on his forearm and her arms went round his neck.

The timer went off.

Lila didn't see where Auntie Nat came from exactly, but suddenly she was there.

'Smart. Great minds think alike,' she said, looking at Lila sat on the porch.

Lila grinned, knowing that if Cooper complained about cheating Auntie Nat was on her side.

'What are you doing?'

She was speaking to Daddy.

'Laura set me homework,' Daddy said.

Auntie Nat didn't say anything else, waving through the kitchen window at everyone else.

Lila wrapped arms around her knees.

The game was over now, but she didn't want to go inside and start up another round. She wanted to stay outside, with Daddy.

She mumbled the last part to Auntie Nat when she stood by the backdoor and asked her if she was coming.

'Aren't you gonna get bored out here with me?' Daddy said. The strange face was gone again.

Lila shook her head.

But she did get bored, when the crow she'd been watching flew off.

'Stay here a sec. I'll go get your sketchbook,' Daddy said.

He left his notebook with his pen on top of it, and Lila looked at it again. It was like codebreaking. She'd see letters that she recognised, and when she looked harder she saw others and then her brain filled in the gaps. The first item she decoded as 'Scrambled Eggs x 2 Refused x 1'. She didn't know what some of it meant, but they'd had scrambled eggs for breakfast that morning and Daddy had been sick. She didn't think he'd eaten any of them though.

She asked him about it when he came back with one of her sketchpads and some pens.

At first she thought he was gonna be mad at her, but then he sighed and sat down. He put the notebook back on his knee.

'I'm making a list of stuff that I can't eat right now...'

''Cause it makes you sick?'

He nodded.

'But why?'

The strange look was back, even though he was smiling at her, and she wanted it to go away.

'Do you remember your fourth birthday?'

She nodded, even though she didn't really.

'We let you pick what you wanted for dinner. And you chose ice-cream.'

She remembered that part.

'You ate a whole pint of cookie dough ice-cream by yourself. And then you were sick and had stomachaches all night and the next day. You didn't want ice-cream again for weeks.'

Oh, she definitely remembered that. Cookie dough ice-cream had never tasted quite as nice after. She liked strawberry now, or cherry.

'It's kind of the same thing for me. Does that make sense?'

She nodded. So someone had made Daddy eat a bunch of scrambled egg, and loads of other stuff, and now he didn't like it anymore.

She opened up her sketchpad and found a blank page. She pulled out several colours, while she decided what to draw. The purples were catching her eye.

It was their favourite colour. Her and Daddy, something they shared.

She started to work on a princess-superhero with a purple suit, dark purple hair and purple magic sparks around her. She was thinking of Wanda for the last part. The princess-superhero could move things with her mind, and make bad guys disappear into clouds of purple sparks. And then, because Daddy had made her think about ice-cream, she drew a tub of mint-choc ice cream and decided it was her purple hero's favourite flavour.

She showed it to Daddy when she was done.

He got what the purple blobs were meant to be - the magic sparks - without her telling him. And she almost jumped up and down when he said he liked it. She still wanted a hug, but it was ok for now.

He handed the sketchpad back to her, and shut his notebook.

'Are you done?' she asked.

'Yup, all done. Thank you, sweetheart.'

She wasn't sure what she was being thanked for, but it felt nice.

Chapter Text

In total there were fifteen items on Clint's list.

Some were straightforward.

Sushi. Scrambled eggs. Key lime pie.

Others were vague.

Fishy orange soup, read one entry. Others were just lists of ingredients, some with questions marks next to them. Meat - Bird? Sauce sweet. Cherries?

The ones that bothered her the most were the ones she'd cooked, the ones she enjoyed cooking.

Macaroni and cheese. Tuna casserole. Baked ham.

Clint's captor had seemingly gone for variety, trying to tempt him, to figure out what he liked. She remembered what Clint had said, about being made to beg, and she felt sick to her stomach.

She stayed up late, bookmarking recipes on her laptop to print out the next day. Most of the things on the list were American or European cuisine. None of her family were great spice lovers, but with enough coconut milk she was sure she could manage Indian food the whole family would eat. Much of the Asian recipes she looked up called for specialist ingredients. She drew up a shortlist and found the closest stores which carried them on Google Maps. Her jaw dropped when she clicked for directions and saw the estimated time.

A thought crossed her mind.

She glanced across at her phone, picked it up and found the number. It was too late for a call, but she could send a text.

When it was done she shut down her laptop, checked in on Nate, and went to get ready for bed.

She was brushing her teeth when her phone started to buzz. She almost swallowed the toothpaste in her rush to answer it.

'Hi, Tony,' she said.

'You needed my help?'

'Yes. It's not anything important, more of a favour really,' she said, embarrassed that she was about to ask a genius, billionaire superhero to do her shopping for her. She really should have just gone to sleep.

'I was wondering if you would be able to get some things for me...?'

'Absolutely. What do you need? Nothing too illegal I hope.'

She laughed. 'No. No. All legal, just kinda hard to find when you live in the middle of nowhere. Um, I've got a list. Would it be easier if I snapped a picture and send it to you, or should I read it all out?'

To his credit, Tony didn't ask questions about Laura's sudden interest in garam masala, oyster sauce and five-spice powder. But he also refused to let her pay him back. Laura insisted he come and stay at the farm some time, extending an open invitation.

She didn't mention Clint and Tony didn't either. She assumed he was already getting his information from elsewhere.

After she hung up she collapsed back onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Her hand brushed over her husband's side of the bed and she scrunched her eyes shut before the tears could start.

--

Steve's first task of the day was to help Laura by carrying in the contents of Stark's care package, while simultaneously avoiding looking in her direction as she fed Nate at the kitchen table.

Laura muttered under her breath while Steve lugged in the second box of noodles.

The boxes had been there on the front porch that morning, presumably delivered by drone or other hi-tech means.

'See, this is what happens when you ask Stark for help,' Clint said.

He seemed to be in a good mood today. Steve thought he might have been upset - Laura's sudden interest in Eastern cuisine was clearly a work-around for his issues around food, and she'd gone to Stark for help. But he seemed to be amused by the whole thing.

Laura looked on in dismay as Steve and Natasha worked to fit everything into the cupboards.

'He didn't have to send so much...I only asked him for a few essentials.'

Steve put down a stack of cook books on the kitchen table. If looks could kill, they'd be a pile of ash already from how Laura was glaring at them.

Clint was hiding a smirk behind his hand. Laura looked at him and puffed out her cheeks. Steve guessed it was some kind of inside joke between them, because Clint laughed.

'If I had a hand free I'd smack you right now,' Laura said.

'Hey, now you know what I'm talking about though. You don't ask Stark for help.'

Steve knew that Clint had more reason to complain about Tony's backhanded generosity than most. As a team they were all aware that their archer was the most vulnerable on the battlefield - including said archer, if his outburst days earlier was anything to go on. Tony tried to rectify this through frequent upgrades to Clint's equipment, whether it had been asked for or not. Steve had intervened once or twice, rescuing Clint from the scientist's clutches when testing went on too long. Tony seemed to forget that while he could manage perfectly well on no sleep and a diet of coffee and smoothies, his fellow humans were not so fortunate.

'I didn't ask him for help. I asked him for a favour not a hand-out. He wouldn't even let me pay.'

'Rookie mistake there Laura, honey. Rookie mistake.'

'Next time that bastard comes to visit I am going to drown him in hospitality,' Laura muttered. 'I am going to fill him so full of pie he won't be able to move.'

Steve resolved never to get on Laura's bad side. It sounded like a terrifying place to be.

--

Laura was still annoyed with Tony, even as she went through several of the cook books with a stack of sticky notes, marking interesting pages.

She hated charity - not the concept itself, but being on the receiving end. It made her feel like she had back in school, like she wasn't a person so much as a role. The poor girl whose father left her, whose mother couldn't afford to buy her new shoes so she fixed her old ones with duct tape. The teachers felt sorry for her, had a fundraiser, gave her a new pair of shoes in front of everyone. They'd been good shoes, and they'd lasted right up until high school. They'd felt like concrete blocks on her feet every day.

When she'd told Clint that story, he'd had a slightly different point of view. 'Who gives a shit what they think? You got free shoes out of it,' had been his response. She'd tried to explain it, how it felt to be a receptacle for everyone's pity, guilt and excess compassion. Clint had listened without interrupting her, considering before he made his counterpoint. His counterpoint had pretty much consisted of the sentiment 'fuck them'. They'd been rather young at the time.

'Sorry about all this...'

Laura looked around and saw Clint, lingering in the doorway.

'It's how he shows he cares. He just gives you shit. I've told him before that you don't like it...but...' He shrugged. 'Probably my fault.'

Laura sighed.

'You working out what to make tonight?' he asked, walking over and looking down at the page she was on.

She nodded, as he pulled out a chair and sat next to her.

'Can I help?' he asked. 'It seems to make it easier...when I've done something myself.'

'Of course,' she said.

He smiled at her.

'It's not your fault, Clint,' she said, looking back at the book.

'I know that...'

His voice sounded so small, she almost thought she'd imagined it or else they'd finally managed some sort of direct telepathic communication.

'I know...I know you're right but....' he said.

'Knowing and feeling are two separate things,' she finished gently.

He nodded, picking up one of the discarded recipe books and starting to flick through it. Laura shoved a stack of sticky notes at him.

'If you see anything you like the look of mark it with one of these.'

He smirked a little. Unlike him, Laura had finished high school and had been a good student, not good enough to manage a full scholarship but she'd taken pride in her work. Sticky notes had been a key part of that. They'd been free - her English teacher had supplied her with them - and as a result they'd become a key part of her learning process. The only downside was having to peel them all off at the end of the year, when she had to hand the textbooks back.

'How do the kids feel about the menu change?'

'I mentioned it to them earlier, they seemed excited,' Laura said. She didn't need to tell him that the kids had worked it out, that Lila had proclaimed that she would gladly eat bugs if it meant they could have dinner as a family again.

Clint went quiet for a few moments. He turned a page.

'I remember this. Nat and I had it on a mission in Phuket.'

He turned the book so she could see the picture. Some sort of skewered meat with rice.

'Good?'

'Wasn't bad. I was kinda worried about Nat stabbing me with the skewer at the time though.'

The memory made him smile. He peeled off a sticky note and stuck it to the page.

--

When Steve came into the kitchen to see if he was needed Laura told him she had things covered.

She was still getting the sense that things weren't completely settled between Steve and her husband, but decided she would leave the meddling to Natasha.

Steve had looked surprised when he'd seen Clint stood peeling potatoes. Pleasantly surprised, maybe relieved.

Clint, for his part, ignored Steve. Acting as if he hadn't seen him.

Laura asked him about it once they had the onions, the garlic and the spices gently cooking.

He shrugged at her.

'Not much to say.'

He'd just finished cubing the chicken, sliding it into the pot with the spices. He turned his back to her while he washed his hands, the knife and the chopping board, and she thought the conversation was over.

When he turned around again though he started signing.

He abandoned me.

Laura could see the anger behind the words, even if his face looked the same as before.

I'm pissed off. I feel like I can't trust him. I feel rejected. I feel--

He started to falter.

I want things to go back to normal. I want to forget. And whenever I see him I feel like I did when the team found me, like I'm...

And then came the list of words. Laura knew most of them. Worthless had featured before. SHIELD had helped remove that one, but then SHIELD had become HYDRA and worthless was back in play again. Monster was new, at least to her ears. She'd heard it once after Loki, and then it had sunk away again, back into the mental sludge. Trash was a joke, something he called himself when he was having a low day. There were others as well. Many more. More than she could cope with.

Clint, she signed. Not true. She was emphatic, looking him in the eye. Before she might have been able to show him how she felt with touch, so for now she was left with words, and gestures.

Finally he nodded. She didn't know if he was agreeing or just giving in before the spices in the bottom of the pot burned.

He went back to chopping vegetables, and she stirred the pot.

--

The kitchen smelled funny.

It tickled the back of her nose like an itch, and Lila thought she was going to sneeze but she didn't.

Everyone was at the table, except for Nate because he was a baby.

Daddy smiled at her.

When Mommy put her plate in front of her she wrinkled her nose. She couldn't see any bugs, but they might be hiding in there somewhere. Cooper's encyclopaedia said people in other countries ate bugs, that they fried them and put them on sticks or covered them in honey and ate them whole. Lila had said she would eat it, but that had been hours ago when dinner had seemed a long way off.

Mommy put something down in the middle of the table. She said it was bread, but it was flat and had green specks on it. It smelled nice though, so Lila took a piece.

She was sitting next to Auntie Nat, and she watched as Auntie Nat tore off a piece of the bread and dipped it in the thick sauce.

Lila copied her.

The flavours were strong, but not unpleasant. Lila tore off another piece of bread and scooped up more of the sauce. It was nice, but it made her mouth tingle a little until she drank some water.

She looked across the table towards Daddy. She saw him pushing his fork through the sauce and rice, mixing them together, and at first she thought he wasn't eating like before. But then he did. She watched him chew and swallow, listening all the time to something Wanda was saying. He didn't make any weird faces.

Lila did the same, mixing the sauce with the rice and swallowing a big mouthful. The tingle was stronger this time. Her glass was empty by the time it faded.

'Is it too spicy for you, pumpkin?'

Daddy was looking at her.

She shook her head, scooping up another mouthful. Her face felt hot.

'I'll get you another glass of water...'

Daddy pushed back from the table.

Lila shook her head, unable to talk with her mouth full. She didn't want him to go.

'I'll do it. I'm closer to the sink,' Mommy said.

Lila looked and made sure that Daddy was sat back down, that he started eating again, and only then did she drink her water and wait for the tingle to die down.

Chapter Text

Laura tugged her nightgown free of the box it had got stuck on.

'And I always complain you never take me anywhere nice,' she said, pulling her jumper down over her hands.

The chill in the barn was insistent.

'Hey, what about our honeymoon?' Clint smirked at her.

Laura remembered their honeymoon well.

'Oh, well the setting was very romantic. I'll give you that.'

They'd fetched up in a cabin in Maine, deep in a heavily forested area. It had made her feel small, but somehow special, to look at all those trees stretching on like a blanket over the landscape.

Clint had been anxious, frequently disappearing with a phone she had never seen before. She'd asked about it, after the third time, and he'd told her he might have a job - one which could guarantee security for both of them. He was scared though, too. She could see it. She told him to go for it.

Two days later a man with an eyepatch and a stare that could melt metal arrived at the cabin door, and their new life began.

'Are you going to be warm enough?' Clint said, looking at her. There was worry there, and maybe guilt. Wait, scratch that. This was Clint. Definitely guilt.

'I'll be fine,' Laura said.

Natasha had pitched the idea to her that afternoon. She'd spent another night with Clint, and there'd been no incidents. There were nightmares, but they were barely noticeable apparently.

After speaking to Natasha, Laura had then gone to Clint. It had taken a bit of work. The dust, he'd said. The spiders. The cold. Laura had shrugged them all off. Then she'd asked him point blank.

'Do you think it'll help?'

And Clint had nodded.

'Then I'm doing it.'

--

That morning Laura had been a little stumped over what to do for breakfast. Although Clint had only specified scrambled eggs as a problem, she wanted to exclude egg entirely for the moment. It didn't seem right to have sausage and bacon without eggs, and to be honest she was a little tired of cooked breakfasts. She was sure her cholesterol must be through the roof by now. The amount of milk and cereal it would take to feed the whole household though. It would almost be worth getting a trough and filling that up.

So it was with an element of relief that she came downstairs to find Steve holding a huge hamper full of breakfast pastries.

'It was out on the porch,' he said.

'Stark?' Laura asked.

'Yes,' Steve replied.

Oh, Tony Stark was definitely on her Christmas card list now. The ones with the sequins inside which spilled out when you opened them and were a devil to clean up.

'This one actually is my fault.'

Laura hadn't heard the backdoor open, but Clint and Natasha were there. Clint was smiling at her in a lopsided kind of way. It was the kind of look he gave when he thought he might be in trouble.

'I, uh...actually I called him last night. To thank him.' He smacked the back of one hand as he spoke, looking at Laura. She got the message. And to warn him about my crazy wife who takes unsolicited gifts as a personal affront.

'He asked if there was anything I needed. I think he probably meant, like, therapists or stuff but...uh...I asked for this instead.'

Laura got the lopsided smile now. She put things to the back of her mind.

'Well I guess that's breakfast sorted,' she said.

--

Laura pulled the layer of blankets over her, right up to her chin. She still felt cold.

Clint was there next to her, but further away than they usually slept.

'Why didn't you let Tony find you a therapist?' she said, looking at the beams overhead.

She'd been prepared for a grunt, or the sound of fabric shifting as he shrugged. Instead she heard him take a deep breath.

'He'd get the best. I know he would. But I...I don't know if I could talk to them. Y'know, really talk. It'd just be a waste of time and money.'

'Surely it'd be worth a try though.' She turned her head to look at him.

He took another deep breath.

'I saw three different shrinks at SHIELD. Most of the time I'd just say whatever I needed to to get back to whatever I was doing. But there was one session I just...needed to talk. I opened up, told her about my dad, my mom, my brother...all that early childhood stuff those psychology types seem to drool over. Of the three, one was useless, two were HYDRA. Wanna guess which one I spilled my guts to?'

He rubbed his forehead.

'I don't think I can do it again. Talking to a stranger. Not with something like this.'

'I understand,' Laura said. She sighed. 'I wish I could touch you...just to show you..' She balled up her hands in frustration.

--

They put the hamper on the table and it was a free-for-all.

Lila was too short to see inside and jumped up and down on her chair until Steve lifted her up so she could see and pick.

Wanda levitated her chosen pastries onto her plate.

Clint looked on at the chaos he had created from a safe distance, close to the toaster.

By the time breakfast was over there were enough crumbs spread over the table and floor to make another half-dozen pastries.

Laura found herself wishing they had a dog, or some other pet capable of hoovering up so much wasted food.

'I'll deal with the clean-up,' Clint said.

He'd stayed put all through breakfast, taking part in conversations - Laura had noticed some slivers of anxiety as time went on, but once the room emptied out he seemed to calm again.

'We need to work on the touch aversion,' she said. She meant to sound calm, comforting, reassuring, bringing it up casually. She'd done some research the previous night.

Clint flinched.

--

'What is it you don't like about being touched?'

'Laura, you sound like a shrink,' Clint groaned, rolling onto his front so his face was half-covered by his pillow.

'But you know I'm not.'

'I don't like that you gave it a name.' His voice was muffled by the pillow, but one ear was still directed her way so at least they were still having a conversation.

'Touch aversion? I didn't make up the name. It's a thing Clint, something lots of people who've been through traumatic events--'

'Stop. Please.'

She stopped.

'I wish you hadn't given it a name,' Clint muttered, then he rolled over slightly to look at her.

Laura wanted to ask why the name made a difference, but didn't want to risk more questions.

'I...Y'know when I tried to pick up Nate? Back when I first came home? I...as soon as I touched him there was just this image in my head, and I felt like...like that man was on top of me, in me, and what the hell was I doing trying to hold my kid. I didn't deserve to. It wasn't right. I was contaminated, dirty...'

'That's bullshit, Clint.'

'But it's what's in my head,' he said, moving onto his back with a sigh. He stretched out his arms. His palm was in easy reach. Laura reached out and put her hand over his.

'What about now?'

He grimaced.

Their previous touches had been light, fleeting. He'd been able to pull away without effort. Now she had her palm pressed onto his, holding it down with gentle, but distinct, pressure. If she felt him try to pull back she would let go. The key thing though, was he trusted her.

'Focus on me. On what you can see, what you can smell here and now.'

She pressed her fingertips to his.

He continued to look at her as the seconds passed.

'Stop.'

There was something in his voice which made her withdraw her hand.

He sighed, opening his mouth for what she knew was going to be another apology. Apologising for failing to let her fix him. She wanted to put a hand over his mouth to make him swallow those words back down.

'I'm sor--'

'Don't.'

It came out shrill. Sharp. Brittle.

He didn't look shocked. More the opposite. Like he had been expecting it. And that was a hundred times worse. He expected his wife to yell at him - to need to vent sometimes when the strain of just being with him became too much. And yes, she'd been more than a little pissed at first about the need for secrecy, of being cut off from her family, of the isolation. And sometimes even now it grated on her, but she dealt with it. She went out and chopped wood. Scrubbed the kitchen counter tops until they gleamed. Watched re-runs of eighties sitcoms. She did whatever she needed to do so that one day, in the heat of an argument, she'd never say something she couldn't take back. She worked hard. Just like she knew he worked hard to keep what happened at work, whatever demons were in his past, away from them. It hurt that he didn't trust that she would do the same.

'Laura...I know you're trying to help. I just...I don't want you treating me like a patient. Not you.'

He looked at her and she realised that if she'd had Wanda's gift - had been able to reach out into other's minds - then she would have pulled every hurtful and hateful memory out of his head. Ripped them all out at the root. The thought was like plunging down into ice-water. Because that would be an invasion worse than anything he had already suffered.

'Ok,' she said. 'Whatever you need, just tell me.'

She forced a smile and he sighed.

A few moments passed by and she was about to ask about turning off the lamp when he spoke.

'Steve actually said something the other day. He said maybe I could talk to Sam Wilson. He's one of the new Avengers recruits - works a lot with vets suffering PTSD. I didn't tell him I'd do it or anything...but maybe I should. So you don't have to play doctor.'

He smirked, lopsided and tired looking.

'You should,' was all she said.

He nodded, and reached for the lamp.

--

Natasha waited in the kitchen early in the morning. She raised a mug of coffee to her lips and watched the barn through the window.

Another breakfast hamper was sat on the table behind her.

When the barn door opened she sat down and opened a nearby book, in an effort to make it look like she hadn't been watching.

'Good morning,' she said when the back door opened.

'It's absolutely freezing out there,' Laura said.

'I don't know how you're cold, you had most of the blankets by the end of the night. It's like you absorb them or something. Like a blanket black hole,' Clint muttered.

They both saw the breakfast hamper at almost the exact same time and shared a look.

'I'll tell him to stop,' said Clint.

'Good,' said Laura.

Natasha smiled and offered them both coffee. It was almost like the mornings from before.

Laura inhaled hers before announcing she was going upstairs to take a shower.

'I feel like I've been shoved in the back of a cupboard for fifty years,' she said. She scowled, but it was playful.

Once she was gone Natasha glanced at Clint.

He looked better, she thought. Or maybe she was imagining it, being too optimistic. But there was a smile on his lips, only faint, which lingered for over a minute after Laura left the room.

The pipes rattled overhead.

'I'm thinking you guys could leave and go back to New York the day after tomorrow,' Clint said, looking at Natasha. 'If that's okay with you?'

Natasha didn't say anything.

Clint smiled at her.

'Nat, I've got this. Honest.'

Natasha looked him in the eye.

'Alright.'

Chapter Text

Clint killed the truck engine about four miles out.

When he'd first moved into the farmhouse with Laura they'd only had the landline phone. If you wanted to make a cell phone call then you had to drive for forty miles just for a scratchy-ass signal which could drop out at any moment.

It had been awesome.

Now, between the growing reach of technology and the internet-which-he-hadn't-wanted-but-Laura-had-insisted-on he could have made the call without leaving the property. He didn't want to risk anyone overhearing him though. Laura would have been bad enough, but Cooper and Lila? And, he didn't really want to admit it, but being able to leave the house without Laura looking all hurt and worried was great. He knew it was his fault, for making her worry - and she had good cause.

He looked at his cellphone and sighed.

He and Sam hadn't agreed on a specific time - oh, they'd given each other a run-down of what days and when were most convenient but they hadn't settled on a concrete slot every week. Sam had just told him 'call whenever you want.' Anything else would be too much like real therapy, like the SHIELD mandated therapy he'd been through before. But the problem, Clint was finding, was that without a hard time and date it was very difficult to make himself do what he knew he should.

It would be only too easy to wait for an hour, head back to the farm, and act like he'd made the call to Sam. Laura didn't really ask him about it - now that he was talking to Sam she'd backed off a little, like she trusted he was making progress. And that trust was pretty much the only reason he still had the phone in his hand.

It hurt like a bitch too though.

Because he didn't deserve it.

If she knew half of what was in his head, she wouldn't trust him out of her sight. And if she knew the other half, she wouldn't be able to look at him.

Sam answered quickly. It gave Clint no opportunity to change his mind and abandon the call.

'Now a good time?' Clint asked.

'Yeah. What's up?'

Clint sighed and settled back into his seat. He tried to figure out where to start, which messy knot of thought to start picking at.

He settled for the one which had been flashing on and off like a lightbulb for the past few days.

'I want to leave. Just go.'

'You mean leave Laura and the kids, right? You know that's not the right thing to do though.'

Clint hummed. He knew. He knew it'd be a shitty way to repay Laura for all the sacrifices she'd made, but what he was doing right now by just being there seemed shitty enough already.

'I can't do it,' he said. His own voice sounded flat, like he was commenting on the weather rather than throwing in the the towel on the life he'd built.

'Clint, you know that's fear talking, and you can't let it win.'

Clint sighed. He had to hand it to Sam, he was giving the therapist thing the old college try. He could see why Steve liked him - he was a good person. It made Clint feel all the worse about dumping all of his issues on the guy like this.

'You sound like you're having a bad day,' Sam said, 'and that's okay. It happens. One day things seem bleak but the next, you're back on that slow road to recovery.'

'That'd be just fine if it was just me on this road,' Clint said. He thought of Laura, with her plans and work-arounds, trying to coax him back into normality like she was dealing with a particularly messed-up rescue dog. He thought of his kids, still waiting for hugs he wasn't sure he could give without feeling sick and dirty. 'I don't know if I can make them wait.'

Now that he was talking he realised that he felt worse than he'd first thought. He hadn't cried yet while talking to Sam, but he'd come close, and there'd been a few post-phone call sobbing fits which he didn't want to think about.

'Laura, she's trying so hard to...to fix me, and I just know it's only a matter of time...'

'A matter of time before what?'

Clint sighed. He didn't want to spell it out.

'She gives up - realises it's not worth it.'

It wasn't a new fear, not something that had started with Roth. Clint had been waiting for Laura to wake up ever since their first kiss, since before they first said I love you, right up until Cooper was born and he dared to think maybe, just maybe it was all true and real.

'Have you talked to her about this, about how you're feeling?' Sam said.

Clint winced. He bit back a sarcastic comment about how Laura had to live with him, she knew what an ill-functioning disaster he was and somehow she still put up with him.

'No.'

'Maybe you should.'

Clint grunted, with the knowledge that he most likely would not be doing that. He trusted Laura, more than he trusted himself, but something in him baulked at telling her about a fear he had kept secret from her for so long. It would be like handing her a knife, ready to plunge into him at some later date. And while he knew she wouldn't do that, that she wouldn't be cruel, there was still that little part of him that whispered doubts to him, that everyone had it in them to change, to turn on him.

'What about the exercises I told you about? Any of them making a difference?'

Sam had talked him through a number of grounding techniques, to use when he felt himself slipping out of the present, or thoughts became too intrusive. They were a little different to the ones the HYDRA therapist had given him, enough that he felt he could use them.

And he had, at night, in the blanket fort which Laura had constructed for them on the floor of their bedroom - part of her 'gradient exposure' or whatever it was called. And it had helped, a little, in keeping him calm when Laura moved while she slept, when an arm had come over onto his side of the fort and in his panic he'd wanted to break it and run.

'Yeah, I guess.'

He hadn't told Laura about that one, about how close it had come. After Loki and the sceptre, one of the things which had scared him most was the thought that maybe Natasha hadn't gotten him out; not completely. That, like a weed, some root had remained and he'd wake up one morning and he wouldn't be the one in the driving seat anymore, that he'd have to watch while he destroyed his family. Now, he didn't have the excuse of alien influence, if he screwed up this time it would all be on him. Him and his broken brain and, let's face it, messed-up genes. He'd been around enough screwed up individuals to know it always went in cycles. Fucked-up parent produced fucked-up kid who produced another fucked-up kid. Really it was just a matter of time, and he'd been kidding himself if he thought he could be anything different.

'You sleeping okay? Are the nightmares still bad?'

Clint wanted to laugh.

'I can cope with the nightmares, it's what happens when I'm awake that's the problem.'

'I hear you. Trust me, I get it.'

Again Clint swallowed back a comment about how Sam couldn't possibly get it until he'd been tied up, kept by a pervert and then when his friends finally turned up to rescue him they couldn't even manage to hide their revulsion.

'I just feel like things would be better if I wasn't here anymore...'

'Clint, if you're thinking of hurting yourself then you really need to--'

'Hold up, I wasn't thinking that.' At least he didn't think he was. 'I just meant, like, going...driving off and just leaving.'

He didn't know if Sam believed him, judging from the silence. Clint really hoped he wasn't going to talk to Steve - Sam had given him the whole therapist speech about confidentiality, how he wouldn't talk to anyone else about what Clint said unless he thought he was a danger to himself or others - he didn't think he could cope with another Avengers intervention.

'You get that the way you think things are, might not be the way they actually are, right?'

Clint mumbled in a way that could have been a yes or a no. He understood what Sam was saying, but Sam wasn't here. Sam couldn't see what he saw.

'When you're anxious or depressed, the world seems a lot different. You just have to ride it out and remember that things are gonna get better.'

Clint raised an eyebrow at that one, but he didn't say anything.

'The important thing is that you communicate with those around you. If you shut your family out now, that's not going to help anyone.'

'Yeah...' Clint said. He felt so tired of it all. Three weeks on from Nat and the others leaving and he was still sleeping on the floor, still freaking out at the dipping of a mattress next to him no matter how many times he practised it. It was like a stain he couldn't get out. He was tainted.

'You need to go easier on yourself, alright?'

'Easier said than done,' Clint said. Beating himself up just came naturally. It was practically a family tradition.

'I want you to try something, I want you to write down three things you've achieved every day until we next talk.'

Oh boy, more lists.'

'And no dog-ate-my-homework excuses either. It doesn't have to be anything major, if you feel like crap even just getting out of bed can be an achievement.'

Clint wasn't completely convinced, but he told Sam he would do it.

'Okay. Look after yourself, man.'

'I'll try. Talk to you again soon.'

And then he was alone in his truck. Clint tossed his phone onto the passenger seat and put his hands on the steering wheel in front of him. He leaned forward until his forehead made contact with the hard leather.

Three things he'd achieved, huh?

He wondered if 'not running out on your wife and kids' counted as one.

He started the truck back up and headed for home.

---

Laura greeted him on the front porch.

He could feel her eyes on him, searching his face for some sign of how things had gone.

'Hey,' she said softly. 'I was about to get started on the noodles for the pho, do you mind giving me a hand. I don't know if the broth's come out right.'

'Sure,' he said, stepping over the threshold, and there was Cooper giving him the same look his mom had minutes before.

Cooper was smart, and that wasn't just parental pride talking - Clint had the grades on his schoolwork to back it up. Clint was sure he'd worked out what was going on, that his dad was going for some kind of help and, just like Laura, he wanted to see if it was working.

Clint smiled, and hoped it looked more natural than it felt.

Cooper smiled back, and started finger-spelling.

H-U-G.

It was a compromise he'd come up with on his own, surprising Clint one day. It hurt every time he saw it, but he couldn't help but admire the resourcefulness.

Clint H-U-Gged him back.

--

'So Sam gave me homework...' Clint said that evening, while Laura adjusted the blanket fort.

'I'm not doing your homework for you,' she said, plumping pillows under the canopy.

The first two nights the fort had had a mattress for a floor, but Laura had changed it after the fourth flashback left him a shivering, sleepless mess.

'But it's hard. Please Laura. Mr Wilson's gonna stick me in detention for a month if you don't.'

'And you said you'd never been to high school.'

He could tell she was smiling.

'I tried, really.'

And he had. After dinner he'd gone up to one of the spare rooms with a notebook and a pen. He'd written out the numbers one, two, three down the side of the page, and then he'd sat there for fifteen minutes thinking.

'Fine,' Laura sighed. 'What did he tell you to do?' She started arranging the blankets.

'Write down three things I've achieved. Every day.'

Laura popped her head out of the fort and looked at him. She held up three fingers and counted down.

'You ate dinner with us, you read Lila her story, you slept in our bedroom. There, boom. All things you couldn't do a month ago.'

Clint looked at her, open-mouthed.

'But...'

Laura silenced him.

'I can keep going. You hugged Cooper, maybe not literally but could you have done that when you first came home? You're talking to someone, trying to make things better. You're still here. I was scared you wouldn't be.'

Her voice trembled and he worried she was about to start crying and he wouldn't be able to comfort her like he needed to. Like he wanted to.

'You're talking to me again.'

And that felt like a stab to the gut.

'Laura...'

He wasn't sure what he wanted to say. He knew what he wanted to do - wrap his arms around her, rest his chin on her shoulder and just hold her in spite of the sick, shivering feeling. In spite of the memories in which touch was all he had, and so every touch seemed to bring him back to that moment, all the worse because they had been gentle.

He could ask Laura to hit him. At least that way he'd be able to touch her skin without feeling like he was infecting her, that the thoughts in his head were spilling out onto her and marking her like him. He wasn't sure if she'd do it or not. Maybe if he begged.

'It's okay. I'm here.'

He didn't even have to say anything for her to know, to recognise the look that came with spiralling thoughts, for her to nudge him up out of the mental nosedive.

You shouldn't have to. You shouldn't have to do all this.

She smiled at him.

'I'm not worth the trouble...'

He hadn't meant to say it, really hadn't meant to say it out loud. It was like he'd opened a door at the wrong moment, and the sound of the radio that was the sunken corners of his brain had seeped out into the hall beyond.

'No. You are,' she said, her voice quiet and fierce. 'You are worth the trouble Clint. I don't care if I lose my voice telling it to you, I will sign that shit, I will write it on the back of your hands so you have to see it every day.'

'I could just wear gloves.'

'Then I'll figure out some other way of getting the message through that stubborn skull of yours. You are worth the trouble.'

She was looking at him with an earnestness that bordered on zealotry. Like she was ready to fight him on this.

So he nodded.

And before he went to sleep he wrote down each of the things Laura had said in his notebook before turning the page and writing again one, two, three, ready for the next day.

If he had nightmares, he didn't remember them.

--

Coming up with three things every day was hard. He wondered if recycling items, even when they still applied, constituted cheating.

Even so, he wrote down 'still here' everyday. It seemed important.

But writing out the exact same list seven times didn't really seem in the spirit of the exercise.

So Clint had to find things to achieve.

He went back to helping Cooper and Lila with their geography work. Neither of them really needed the help, between the family atlas and the internet they were set from here until college, but when he mentioned it at the kitchen table he didn't even have time to finish the question before both of them were nodding like their heads were gonna fall off.

He started making plans to tackle some of the home improvements Laura had talked about. Now that he was home more or less permanently - he doubted that Rogers would call him in unless they were really desperate - Laura would probably let him take another stab at the rattling pipes near the bathroom. The last time he'd tried she'd asked him to stop when the mess became too much and the prospect of him being called away elsewhere became too likely.

And when Laura came to him with one of her pop psychology schemes, he listened.

'Smell is one of the most powerful triggers when it comes to memory,' she said. 'So maybe if we find a smell that you associate with something safe and happy, then you can use it to sort of override the bad memories.'

Her logic seemed sound. He had never been able to forget the signature mix of sweat and booze that characterised his father.

'Any ideas? We could always use chamomile or lavender - they're supposed to be calming.'

Clint thought about it.

'The laundry detergent,' he said. 'We always get the same stuff, and it always reminds me of here I guess.'

--

The next day Laura took all the bed linens, all the pillow cases and the blankets down to the the utility room and put them through the wash.

Clint wasn't sure exactly what she did to them but when they returned the smell of the detergent, what Clint generally considered the smell of home, permeated the whole room.

They lay facing one another on the freshly-made bed and Clint reached up and switched his hearing aids off. Then he closed his eyes.

Maybe he'd hoped it would magically fix everything. That he'd close his eyes and for the first time in over a month he wouldn't feel the weight of cuffs around his forearms and ankles, wouldn't feel the choking panic of not knowing if he was alone or if the bed was about to dip and hot breath ghost over his neck.

It didn't happen like that.

All the thoughts were still there, but they'd taken a step back.

Because there, clogging up his senses, was the smell of home. He was home, and his wife was lying in front of him.

He opened his eyes.

You, he signed, are a genius.

I'm glad, she signed back, and sat up.

He turned his hearing aids back on and sat up as well.

'Do you think you could sleep here now, or is it still too difficult?' she asked.

'One way to find out,' he said.

--

They left a lamp on. Enough so that Clint could see Laura clearly if he woke. Laura had given all their sleep-clothes the same treatment as the sheets. Clint was almost worried about choking on the fumes.

'We might have to change our detergent after this,' he muttered.

Laura looked at him, panicked, and he got a glimpse of what this was all doing to her; having to baby him through simple, normal things.

'Is it not working?'

'No, no. I just meant...we're gonna get sick of the smell, right?'

She relaxed a little, but not enough.

--

He woke up twice, panting and with his skin crawling while Laura slept on, undisturbed.

After the second time he looked at her, and the feeling of how dirty he was, how tainted, hit him like a punch to the stomach.

He curled up, and tried to will himself not to panic and bolt like he wanted to.

He remembered talking to Natasha, how she had tried to make him see how stupid it was to think like that, that it was not true.

And Natasha knew. She had been through it. She knew what she was talking about, and she was right. Natasha was always right.

He breathed in deeply, tried turning the words into a mantra. I am not dirty. Natasha is always right. I am not dirty.

It felt like clutching a crucifix in the face of a horde of vampires, not knowing if it would be strong enough to hold them all back.

They chanted back at him, and the words had a familiarity which was almost comforting. Weak. Deserved it. Worthless. If you'd been better...

If you'd been better...

If you'd been better you could have stopped Roth before he touched you. If you'd been better you would have never been kidnapped, never lost consciousness, never fallen off that building in the first place.

If you'd been better...

Loki would never have got to you. You'd never have killed those agents.

If you'd been better...

Barney would've never hated you, never abandoned you.

If you'd been better...

Clint gripped his forearm, sunk his fingertips into the flesh, tried to put the brakes on the thought train before it reached its inevitable conclusion.

Your dad would never have hit your mom. Would've listened when she tried to tell him he was too drunk to drive.

And he knew it wasn't true, maybe. That damn HYDRA shrink, she had walked him through that one. It was common, she had told him, for children from abusive backgrounds to feel guilty, to blame themselves in part for the behaviour of the abuser. And it had all made sense at the time, had lifted some of the weight. But she was HYDRA, as much of a snake as he had ever come across. Who knew how much of what she said had been medicine, and how much poison?

If he'd been better...

Clint felt his stomach lurch.

--

Laura found him in the bathroom, trying to wipe the last traces of vomit from his mouth.

She came holding his hearing aids and a glass of water.

He put the former in and drained the latter, trying to blot the bitter taste off his tongue.

'Is it dumb to blame yourself for your dad being a drunk piece of shit?' he said.

'It's not dumb,' Laura said. 'Your dad being a drunk piece of shit had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with him.'

'So it is dumb, then. I shouldn't feel like there was something I could have done...'

'If that's how you want to play it then fine, it is dumb. Horrendously dumb. Case closed.'

She was smiling, but it was strained. That was the one thing that really sucked about marriage, how his pain became her pain.

'Is it...Is it dumb for me to think...to think..?'

He was choking on the words, but still he kept trying. It was like trying to work a bullet fragment out of a wound. It hurt, usually way more than the initial injury, but in the long-term it made things easier.

'...to think that I deserved it?'

At the time it had felt like punishment. Like this was what he got for thinking he was tough, an Avenger, one of the good guys. He got tied up in some rich pervert's dungeon and used like the thing he was.

He deserved it.

It was where he belonged.

'Permission to slap you?'

Clint blinked. 'Wait, wha--?'

The clap echoed in his ear like a gun going off.

He practically felt the sting of it blooming across his cheek.

'Sorry, I've been itching to show that off.'

'Since when did you learn to stage slap?'

'Since Natasha and I got very bored and a little drunk a few Christmasses ago. You were in Libya. But my point is no, you did not deserve it. Yes, it is dumb that you think that. Dumb, but I get it. You and Natasha always act like you're already damned, like any good that you might do is already outweighed and outranked by the bad, and you always act like anything bad that might happen to you is...is karma or retribution or something. You deserve to be happy, goddamn it!'

He opened his mouth.

'If that's an apology of some sort then I will slap you for real,' Laura warned.

Clint smiled at her.

'I'd like that. At least then I'd get to feel your skin.'

She frowned at him, and he realised that he'd done it again. Left the door open while his broken brain was doing it's thing.

'I'm gonna let that go for now, because it's late, but you can be damn sure I'm coming back to it. Do you want to sleep in the bed or the fort?'

'The bed. I just got carried away. I'll be...'

He winced. He had been going to say I'll be better.

'Are you sure? I don't want to wake up with vomit in my hair. I had enough of that in my early-twenties.'

'Aw, man, college-age Laura sounds like fun. Seriously though, I'll be okay. My mind kinda wandered a bit too much.'

Laura gave him a look and a small smile, before turning and heading back to bed.

Clint brushed his teeth, then went to join her.

--

'You know this is pretty much the one time in my life I've actually done homework,' Clint said, closing the cover on his achievement diary. He hadn't read it all out, that would have been too embarrassing, but he'd given Sam the highlights.

'Well now we know why you're not the one with all the school PSAs. Did it help at all?'

'Yeah. Although now Laura tells me my 'self-esteem' is pretty much a train-wreck.'

'Well, you sound better than you did last time. I was kinda worried about you, man.'

'Yeah, I tend to have that effect on people. People knew which SHIELD agents had worked with me based on the number of premature grey hairs they had.'

Sam laughed.

'I can see that. You know I can email you some stuff on dealing with low self-worth and self-compassion, if you want?'

Clint grimaced. Those were shrink terms right there.

'More homework? Think I'm gonna pass on that.'

'Hey, fair enough but it seems like it would be helpful. The work we do, any loss is too much, and it takes a toll on you. You can't carry the weight of the world and not expect to end up with a busted back.'

Clint snorted. Because, again, Sam was like Rogers. He was good. There was nothing Sam Wilson could tell him about guilt, nothing that could help him anyway.

'Actually I've got something I wanna work on...'

'Sure, what do you need?'

'I need to do something about my...my touch aversion.'

God, he hated saying it. He'd have had an easier time saying: Hi Sam, can we talk about my erectile dysfunction?

Sam didn't miss a beat.

'I can get some stuff together for the next time we talk, but I could do with some background information now.'

'Wait, you've dealt with this before?'

'A few times, yeah. Most of the time it's pretty mild, but I've seen a couple of people where it was having a big impact on their everyday lives.'

'I can't hold my kids.'

'Well that sounds like it's on the severe end of the spectrum. Good news is that with therapy most people improve.'

'What kind of therapy?'

'Usually just talking therapy is enough. Once you identify the trigger, it's usually pretty straightforward. So what do you think might be the trigger for you?'

'Um, I don't know. What do you think?' Clint said, struggling to keep all the bitterness of the sarcasm out of his voice.

'Sorry, I phrased that badly. I guess what I mean to ask is why? Why don't you like to be touched? In survivors of sexual assault it's often that touch reminds them of the assault...Is that how it is for you?'

'No,' Clint said, then his mind flashed back to Steve grabbing his arms. 'Maybe. Look, I know the difference between my wife touching me, and that...that pervert. I don't get confused like that. I don't like touching my family because...because, I don't know, I feel like I'm dirty or something. Like I'm infected and it's not right, like, like I'm doing something wrong, something I don't deserve by holding them.'

He waited for Sam to go ahead and call him nuts, to tell him it was stupid.

'Alright,' he said. There was a sigh. 'Look, usually at this point I'll refer people on to someone else, someone better suited, who can give them all the help they need. I get that you don't want to do that, so I'll do what I can. It's all about tackling your core beliefs, and I get the feeling that a lot of your core beliefs, well, they're pretty messed up. That's not gonna be easy to fix.'

Clint grunted. He wasn't going to argue with that opinion. As long as he could act normal, get this whole freak episode behind him, he didn't really care about the other stuff.

'If you think you're dirty, that means you're blaming yourself, right? You think you're responsible for what happened to you?'

Clint mumbled a 'yeah', tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. As his hand moved he caught sight of the letters traced onto his skin.

Laura had done what she'd threatened, and on the back of his hands were now inked positive mantras. She'd used a permanent marker as well. He'd washed his hands five times already, and so far the letters were only a little bit fuzzier around the edges.

He smiled.

Sam talked about how it wasn't his fault. How if he could accept that, that everything would be easier. He'd feel better.

Clint had heard it all before.

What he struggled to tell people was: if it wasn't his fault, if he wasn't responsible in some way, then that meant he'd been powerless. And that was terrifying. Just the thought gave him a knot in his stomach.

It had always been something which scared him. But it was a fear which had receded over the years. Until Loki, and the sceptre and the sickening blue wash. He'd thought being a kid was the most powerless he'd ever feel, but that. That had been so much worse.

He never wanted to feel like that again. Like he was paralysed.

So no, there was no way in hell he was ever admitting that what had happened to him on that island was not his fault. Was out of his control. He was not giving someone power like that over him again.

But he could live with maybe trying to feel a little bit better about himself. With those stupid words written all over his hands. He could live with trying to believe Laura was right.

'Clint, are you still there?'

'Yeah, sorry! I was just...see, my wife wrote all these stupid things on my hands to try to get me to...I don't know, think better about myself. I was just looking at some of them and I kinda zoned out.'

He winced. Because he did not zone out and that was a crap lie. It wasn't like he could come out and say 'yeah, sorry Sam but you kinda wasted your breath there for the last two minutes and thirty seconds'.

'Oh, really. What did she write? You don't have to tell me if it's private...'

'No, I can tell you. She wrote 'You ARE worth the trouble,' and 'You matter'. 'You deserve happiness' and a bunch of other stuff.'

She'd written 'I love you' - and that was 'love' as in the actual word, she hadn't taken the shortcut and just drawn a heart - down at the start of his wrist, but he wasn't going to pass that one on to Sam.

'Is it helping?'

'Maybe,' Clint admitted. It had made him smile a couple of times, although that was mostly at how adorable Laura was when she got determined rather than because of any major change in his thinking.

'So were you able to let her hold your hands in order to write on them or...?'

'Yeah. I, uh, talked to her about it...'

It had been the dreaded follow-up to his accidental comment about wanting her to slap him. He'd admitted it to her - the intrusive thoughts which came whenever he'd tried to touch one of them, how it didn't feel right to have that in his head while he was with his family. Somehow she seemed to understand what he was trying to say.

'She told me to focus on the feeling of the pen, and not on her touching me. It worked pretty well I guess - I mean, my hands are covered in writing. I didn't like it, but didn't have to tell her to stop.'

'What about when she stopped writing?'

'Lasted about four seconds.'

'Well, I'll see what I can come up with. Really, just the more you try and talk it through the better. The more you understand the reasons behind it, the more likely you are to be able to get past it.'

Clint hummed.

He thought back to those four seconds, sitting on his and Laura's bed with his hand resting on hers. It had been like there was another person in the room with them, and it was his fault, he'd let him in.

So he had to be the one to get rid of him.

--

For the first time Clint put Roth's name into the search engine.

He put himself in work mode while he read through the obituaries. It still made his skin crawl, even with that buffer, seeing his rapist being praised in the national press.

It was being passed off as a boating accident. Roth had apparently been 'lost at sea' while vacationing on his yacht. That was probably for the best. No way was anyone ever gonna pass off what he'd done to the guy as a heart attack.

He scanned through accounts of business mergers and acquisitions and a bunch of other stuff he barely understood. What struck him was how, for a rich, influential guy, just how boring he was. Maybe he'd been stuck around Stark for too long and he just expected the super-rich to be loud and obnoxious and generating headlines wherever they went.

Nat said she'd found evidence of Roth going to prostitutes and BDSM clubs, but he doubted that information would be freely available on the net.

He spent a while looking at photos. It was hard to connect the guy beaming at the camera while he shook some other rich guy's hand, with the guy who had sweated and grunted over him. Who had smiled while Clint told him to go to hell; that smug, irritating smile like he knew that someday soon Clint was gonna break and give in. Well Clint had wiped that smile off his face in the end, just like he'd promised.

It was while he was looking at one of the photos - it must have been taken at a fundraiser or something, Roth standing around with other tuxedo wearing, sleek looking guys - that he remembered something.

I can't wait to show you off to all of my friends.

Fuck.

He gripped the edge of the desk. His stomach had dropped like he'd been on a rollercoaster, but he was fine, he was okay.

There were more.

There were more out there.

Clint raised his eyes back to the photograph on the screen and reached for his phone.

Chapter Text

A decade ago all this would have taken a team of agents years of careful surveillance, breaking into archives and extensive interrogations.

Now all it took was Clint, Natasha, a few pots of coffee and one very sophisticated AI.

Tony kept his distance, most likely in the interest of plausible deniability, and Natasha couldn't blame him.

FRIDAY more than made up for his absence, reminding them to take adequate breaks and to eat - even going so far as to order them pizza without being asked.

If Natasha didn't know any better, she'd have said FRIDAY was feeling guilty for failing to find Clint sooner and was trying to make it up to him now.

'Agents, you've been working for six hours straight. I really suggest you take a thirty minute break. I can continue to monitor your surveillance feeds and make logs of any movements.'

Natasha rubbed her eyes.

She glanced over her shoulder, at the screen where their list was starting to take shape. So far they had over a dozen names of individuals they were suspicious of - whose finances showed strange transactions, who had allegations of sexual misconduct made against them and then dropped and buried or, more damningly, had messages from Roth referencing his preferred recreational activities.

There was one name at the top of their list. FRIDAY had followed his trail into the deep web and onto a message board for 'snuff enthusiasts'. Worse, was the the correspondence they'd found between their mark and what looked to be a people smuggler. The messages had been dated from several months ago so whatever had happened, it was long over now.

'FRIDAY, can you get me the blueprints for this guy's house?' Clint asked, still staring at the screen in front of him.

'Of course, just give me a few moments.'

Natasha turned and looked at him.

'Clint, we had an agreement.'

'What?'

He jolted as if she'd just woken him up.

Natasha pointed to the ceiling.

'You heard the computer. Time for a break.'

He didn't argue more, nodding wearily and pushing himself away from the desk.

They relocated to the kitchen, where Clint pulled out the ingredients for fajitas. While he seemed to be eating better, he still seemed to have issues eating anything he hadn't helped to make. Natasha had ended up finishing the pizza FRIDAY had sent up to them the day before by herself.

'Y'know we could probably just get the names of the rest of these sickos out of Morris, the snuff guy,' Clint said, slicing peppers. 'I mean, he's the only one so far that's US based. It would be simpler just to grab him and see what he knows.'

He was acting like he was calm, like it was just another job, but Natasha knew all his tells. He wasn't fooling her.

'Are you sure you'd be able to handle that?' she said.

The knife thudded down and stopped. He moved around to face her, leaning back against the counter.

'Probably not,' he admitted.

Natasha nodded.

'I'll handle it,' she said. 'If we decide to go that route.'

He smiled at her.

'Thanks for helping me with this. You're a great friend.'

Natasha folded her arms. 'You know how I feel about the 'f' word.'

Clint laughed and went back to cooking.

--

She made him take a nap after they ate.

They'd gone to sleep together the night before, and Natasha knew for a fact that after she'd fallen asleep Clint had gone back to the lab to carry on working. She'd woken up, pushed up into vague wakefulness by her own familiar selection of nightmares, and had noticed his absence. FRIDAY had snitched on him without too much persuasion.

'I'm fine,' Clint said, while Natasha herded him towards a conveniently placed couch. She already had pillows and blankets set up.

'We agreed. Regular meals, and at least four hours of sleep per day.'

Clint frowned at her. Instantly he reminded her of Cooper when, age four-and-a-quarter, he had stubbornly resisted all of his parent's efforts to put him to bed during one of her visits. The expression was an almost perfect copy.

Natasha folded her arms, made it clear that this was nonnegotiable.

Clint sat down on the couch.

'Wake me up in an hour?'

'Two hours.'

Clint scowled. 'An hour and thirty minutes?' he tried.

Natasha raised an eyebrow.

'Fine, two hours,' he said, sighing.

Natasha waited until he had lain down, put his hearing aids on the table and pulled the blanket over himself before she asked FRIDAY to dim the lights and left him to it.

--

They'd gone through all of Roth's correspondence - emails, texts, phone calls, anything they could get their hands on. Natasha had tried to take charge of that one, but Clint had been stubborn.

She'd watched him carefully, while they read through some of Roth's most recent emails - ones he had sent from his island retreat.

Got a wonderful new pet.

I'll let you meet him once I've taught him some manners.

Clint had sat there, face blank and saying nothing. The only outward sign of any distress was his knuckles, turned white from how tightly he was holding his fists. Natasha had wished there was something she could say, but suspected the last thing he wanted was for her to draw attention to it.

He was trying to train himself back into normality.

--

Natasha started to plot out a kidnapping.

The digital evidence had helped them narrow down their targets, and in some cases had led them directly to them, but confirmation was always useful. Caleb Morris could potentially give them names which weren't even on their radar.

But getting them was going to be messy.

Natasha heard footsteps, and goddammit she'd said two hours...

'I know this is sort of hypocritical coming from me, but are you sure this is the most...healthy way of dealing with things?'

She looked around and there was Tony.

He held his palms up.

'No judgement intended. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I know you're the Barton whisperer and everything, so if you thought this was a bad idea you'd have shut him down by now but--'

'Tony, you can just say you're worried,' Natasha said.

He shut his mouth, and glanced to one side. His eyes caught on one of the screens.

'Fuck...' he breathed. 'Please tell me that isn't your little murder list up there.'

Natasha looked over her shoulder.

'Yes that is our little murder list.'

'Fuck,' he said again. 'I..I know some of these people. Not well, they're not friends, but I...'

He went up and tapped a finger over the screen.

'This guy. I've met this guy.'

His fingers were hovering over Caleb Morris.

He looked at Natasha like he wanted to know, but he was scared to ask.

'Do you know what snuff is, Tony?' she said.

His eyes widened and he drew his hand away from the screen.

'Christ,' he muttered, stepping away.

He headed back towards the doorway.

'Make sure you clean up after yourselves. One mass-murder cover-up was enough for me.'

'We plan to. Don't worry. We know what we're doing.'

--

It was a little like riding a bicycle. One you'd learned, you never forgot.

Morris talked easily, stupidly easily. Natasha didn't even need to start on the second finger. For a man who enjoyed inflicting pain, he certainly couldn't take it.

Clint sat in the corner on a chair, watching everything, soaking it in.

When Morris began to plead for his life, for them not to hurt him, Clint said 'Is that what the kid said to you?'

Morris had looked at Clint, bewildered and terrified. Up until this point his focus had been almost exclusively on Natasha. She was the one who had the pliers after all.

'The kid. The one you bought so you could kill him. Skinny, brunette, freckles. That was what you asked for.'

Morris had made a noise and Natasha suspected that was when it sunk in that he wasn't getting out of this room alive.

'I have money,' he babbled. 'I have money, I can give it to you. I can pay you.'

Clint snorted and looked at Natasha.

The question was clear. Have we got everything?

Natasha nodded.

When Clint stood up she moved aside, out of the range of the spray.

He made it quick, quicker than the man probably deserved, and that was that.

--

That night they broke into a crematorium to dispose of the body. They sat side by side on the floor while they waited for the corpse to turn to ash, Clint's shoulder nudging against hers.

'How are you feeling?' Natasha asked.

Clint frowned. 'You sound like Sam,' he muttered. 'Uh, good I guess. Just, feels like we're too late. I think about what that kid must have gone through and...' He sighed and lowered his shoulders. 'I should have gone for a gut stab and let that piece of shit bleed out.'

Natasha didn't disagree.

'We get called out for aliens, but stuff like this...it just happens and no-one...no-one does anything about it. There were people out there who knew what these guys were doing in their fucked up little club and they just looked the other way.'

He shook his head, staring ahead in bewilderment.

'I thought you were more cynical than that,' Natasha said, softly.

He smiled.

'I should be,' he said with a shrug. 'But then I am an idiot.'

Natasha flicked him in the side of the head.

'You are not an idiot. Say that again and I'll tell Laura to write it on your hands.'

'Please don't, I only just got this lot cleaned off.'

He held up his hands for her to see the faded marks which wrapped around them.

'I can re-write those for you, if you want?' she said.

She'd caught him looking at the words a few times, earlier in the week when they'd been clearer, smiling to himself in a way she seldom got to see.

'Nah, I'm good,' he said, folding his arms so his hands were no longer visible. A moment passed. 'I'm doing the right thing, aren't I?'

Natasha raised an eyebrow.

'You're asking me - me - questions about morality?'

He blinked, like he seriously didn't understand her point or see the irony. Like he didn't understand why she wouldn't be qualified to answer.

'I'm not feeling guilty about that guy--' he pointed in the direction of the oven. 'Fuck that guy. I just mean...am I making stuff worse by doing this? I said I wouldn't leave anymore, not unless it was important and--'

Natasha swivelled round and pushed herself across the floor until she was facing him. She held up a hand, to tell him to shut up.

'Is this going to make you feel better?'

Clint didn't answer.

'Let me rephrase. Is wiping these scum off the face of the earth going to make it a little bit easier for you to sleep at night?'

He nodded.

'Then it's worth it.'

--

They headed back to the Tower, to plan the next stages of their operation. Time was an issue. Picking off their targets too quickly risked alerting them that something was wrong, that someone was hunting them, but Clint didn't want to be away from home longer than was necessary. It was already clear he felt selfish about pursuing this crusade, in spite of all of Laura's long-distance support.

He was regularly getting texts which made him smirk, and which he always replied to. She called most evenings, usually a video call with one or more of the children. Natasha was generally dragged in at some point. It was nice, lighthearted and full of love but Natasha could see how much it was hurting him.

They put a map up in one corner, and began to organise the time and place for each hit. They had twenty-one names in total on their list, across fourteen countries. Seventeen had families or other people living with them, and Clint had flat-out rejected taking those ones out in their homes where there was the potential for collateral damage. A handful of them even lived with their victims; beaten, tortured or brainwashed into a submission so total they didn't even try to escape. Natasha remembered the look on Clint's face when they had found out that the wife of one of their targets, mother to three children, was a missing woman from almost five-thousand miles away. She'd vanished aged fourteen.

--

Their first stop on what Tony had referred to as 'Murder Tour 2016' was Japan. They took out their first target at a ski resort in Hokkaido. Head shot as he rode a ski lift. Clint hadn't been too thrilled about having to use a rifle, but his bow would have made it too obvious, especially when he had no opportunity to retrieve his arrows.

Target number two died in a hospital in Tokyo, but the fatal blow occurred in a crowded restaurant. Natasha, in a black wig and sunglasses, wove her way through a sea of drunken businessmen. A shot of ricin to the arm as she brushed by, and her work was done.

Afterwards they drove back to their hotel room in nearby Chiba and ate terrible, overpriced pizza while watching a game-show that their rudimentary Japanese was ill-equipped to deal with.

They sat next to each other on the double bed - posing as a couple was generally less suspicious - and Natasha was happy to see some of Clint's disregard for personal space coming back. If there was an imaginary line going down the bed, most of his body was crossing it.

She still ended up eating most of the pizza - a few slices and Clint was done. He went quiet and still, and Natasha could tell he was focusing, willing himself not to be sick. He'd been the same the previous night, when they'd eaten in a tiny noodle bar a few streets away from their hotel. In the end he'd left before her, and she'd hoped he wasn't going outside to throw up in an alley.

When she went to look for him, she found him on a bench looking up at the thin strip of night sky visible above the buildings.

'Can't see shit when you're down here,' he muttered as she sat down next to him.

'Did you manage to keep the ramen down, or have I just wasted seven-hundred yen on you?'

'I felt better once I got outside.'

He sighed, slouching in his seat and then he looked at her.

'He brought it back,' he said. 'That feeling that if I wanted to eat...I had to earn it. That, I mean it's ancient history, like early circus and maybe some of the group homes. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like.'

She leaned in against him, because there was nothing she could really say.

'Come on. We've got a big day tomorrow,' she said, getting up.

He smirked at the cliche.

--

After Japan, the next stop was Indonesia.

The third name on the list was one of Jakarta's mega-rich, born into money and with parents who had never taught him consequences. Apart from the string of teenage sex slaves, used and then abandoned on the streets like unwanted pets, he'd been involved in a fatal hit-and-run which his family had dutifully made go away.

Clint and Natasha ambushed him on a quiet road while he took his Lamborghini for a drive. The idiot was going so fast that after Clint shot out his tyres he smashed into a tree and did their job for them.

After that it was Thailand, and a couple with a secret in their basement. All their guards and security fences came to nothing. Clint and Natasha tripped the alarm deliberately, after they were done, and made sure that all the doors leading to the basement were unlocked and open. As she unlocked the last door, Natasha caught a glimpse of a tiny, naked figure curled up against the wall on a thin mattress, a collar around their neck with a chain leading to a bracket on the far wall. Natasha turned away before she looked too closely, before she felt compelled to go and unhook the chain, to take off her jacket and drape it over the shivering form. It was a reassurance, to know that she still had those feelings - they hadn't been burned out of her, not completely - but right now it was a complication.

They lingered long enough to see the story hit the papers, to know that the girl had been found, before they moved on.

The Mumbai job proved difficult. Their target was almost never alone, and his family was wholly ignorant of what he got up to on his frequent business trips. When she saw him playing with his grandchildren, lifting them up and putting them on his shoulders, Natasha felt nothing but revulsion. After a week of watching and waiting, and realising that all the locations they had thought would work were unusable, they settled on a compromise.

The target liked to visit the Zaveri Bazaar most mornings; perhaps in an attempt to reconnect with his mercantile roots. It was crowded, about as public as it got, but it seemed to be their only option. Clint found a perch up high amongst the cramped buildings, with a line of sight which covered a shop whose owner their target was friends with. Clint bitched afterwards about the state of the roofs, how he almost put his foot through someone's ceiling while he was making his escape. It had been risky, riskier than they cared for, but it was done and they could cross another name off the list.

Next they moved on to China. They had several stops there before they moved on to their final country for the first leg of the tour. First up was Chengdu, home of target number seven. His office had floor to ceiling glass windows, looking out onto the city, and right across the street was a skyscraper in the middle stages of construction. It was a match made in heaven, and Clint got to abseil down the side of a building. Natasha, as the getaway driver, got no such fun.

She got her chance in Hong Kong though - they'd timed their visit to match up with a black-tie event their target was attending. Although it was really too easy to be much fun. All it took was a smile, a few words in beautifully accented Chinese, an obscenely expensive dress and she had a whispered invite to his hotel room. She managed to get a taste of some of the canapes first though. Those kind of events always had the best food, even if she didn't always get a chance to enjoy it.

Clint arranged for a blackout; lights, back-up generator and CCTV, ten minutes after she'd entered the target's hotel room. By the time it arrived she'd garroted her target, and was ready to sprint to the nearest exit. She quickly removed the wig and stuffed it in her purse, wiped off some of her make-up and managed to turn her evening dress into a chic, casual outfit, all before walking down the street to meet up with Clint.

Next was Shanghai. They ambushed the guy in the basement parking lot of his office building. They knew he worked late, usually to nine or ten pm, when most of the other employees had left. There seemed to be no ulterior motive for this other than a genuine love and care for his work. It was during the weekends and holidays that he let go. His particular vice was whipping. He'd joined three separate BDSM message boards, and had been banned by two of them - the third had been shut down by the government. After that he seemed to have turned to prostitutes. He left them bloody, with permanent scars, and at least twice his actions had proved fatal. One woman had made it home, only to die of her wounds three days later. She hadn't been discovered for another three days, when neighbours had no longer been able to ignore the crying of her two year old child.

Natasha zapped him unconscious as he went to get in to his car. Together Clint and Natasha bundled him into the back seat, and drove to a secluded spot on the edge of the Huangpu river. Finding the place had been a nightmare in such a busy city, but Natasha and Clint had thoroughly investigated the area prior to the abduction and were confident they wouldn't be disturbed.

They tied his hands and feet and gagged him. When he started to come around they dragged him out of the backseat. In the dark he might not be able to see the river, but he could certainly smell and hear it. They put him in the trunk, and rolled the car into the river.

It obviously wouldn't be an accident, not with him locked in the trunk, but hopefully by the time the car was found that wouldn't be a problem.

They sat and waited, watching and listening as the car gradually sunk, going down to meet the other trash at the bottom of the river.

Finally there was Seoul.

Natasha drowned the woman in the bathroom of the fashion magazine she worked at. An 'Out of Order' sign on the door, a key swiped from one of the janitorial staff, and a clean change of clothes already stashed in a vent was all she needed.

--

'Well, you've been busy little assassins.'

If Tony was expecting a response then he was disappointed.

Clint and Natasha were sprawled out in a strange configuration of bodies and limbs, right in the middle of a faux-fur rug.

Natasha knew they probably looked ridiculous. But she also knew that Tony knew that if he made fun of them for it, he would regret it.

'So do the beds I have graciously provided you not meet your standards or...?'

'Was too far,' Clint slurred, still half-asleep.

The jet-lag had caught up with them and sunk its teeth into them before they could make it as far as the guest suites.

Natasha shifted, trying to work out the best, least painful route to sitting up. One of Clint's ankles was wedged under the small of her back. She seemed to have been using his other knee as a pillow.

'So is that you guys done with the murder spree now?'

Natasha shook her head, and Clint hissed as she lifted it off his knee.

'We're 'bout half-way done,' she said, peeling herself off of the rug and goddamn it that hurt like hell. The decision to sleep on the floor had, in retrospect, been a bad one.

'Jesus...' Tony muttered. 'Don't suppose you brought back any souvenirs from your travels? Any native liqueurs to make up for the hole you guys have blown in my alcohol supply?'

Clint pointed at her.

'That's all on Nat. You know vodka is basically water to Russians.'

'You helped,' Natasha said, rolling her eyes. She gestured in the direction of their luggage, left abandoned when they'd spotted the rug. 'There's a bottle of sake in there with your name on and some soju as well.'

She extended a hand out to Clint to help him up and he grabbed it without hesitation, probably without even thinking.

'Thanks, Nat.'

--

The kids wanted to know what he'd got them.

Clint stood the tablet up on the coffee table, and showed off some of the assortment of Japanese, Chinese and Korean candy. Lila was so ecstatic about the plushies he'd got her she jumped up and down and almost knocked the tablet out of her mom's hands.

It felt good to see their faces again.

'When do you think you'll be able to come home?' Laura asked. He could tell she was trying to be casual about it, trying to hide how worried she was.

'Not sure,' he said, and her face fell a little. 'It won't be more than six months.'

And that was the wrong thing to say. Probably she'd been hoping he'd be home sooner, had expected him to be home in half that time.

Again he felt a tight, hopeless knot in his gut - that he was doing the wrong thing, like so many other times in his life.

'Okay,' she said. He could practically see her working it out in her head, trying to reconcile herself to the idea of six months without him again.

He didn't try to console her by telling her he'd be home for good this time - he couldn't promise that.

'Think I might be getting passed the touch aversion,' he said, fiddling with a coaster next to him on the coffee table.

Her face brightened up again.

'Not completely,' he said, wary of giving of her false hope. Of making her expect him to be totally fixed again when he came home. 'Just, think maybe it's getting easier.'

Laura beamed at him.

'That's good news. I'm--'

His phone started buzzing in his pocket.

If he was a normal man, with a normal life, he probably would've ignored it. But when barely a dozen people had your number, and none of them would call for no reason, you had to answer.

He sighed, mumbled an apology, and got the phone out of his jacket pocket.

He looked down at the screen.

'Sorry babe, gotta call you back.'

He closed the video chat before Laura had a chance to say anything, and, yeah, he was gonna have to apologise for that one later.

He looked down at the name on the screen, thumb hovering between the 'accept' and 'reject' button.

Sighing, he knew he had to pick the grown-up option, even though his inner voice was screaming at him to just throw the phone out the window and run.

He hit 'accept' and put the phone to his ear.

'What do you want, Steve?'

Chapter Text

This looked bad.

When you walked into a room and everyone in it was already seated, you knew things were bad.

Clint had never been called into a principal's office, but he imagined it felt a little like this.

He tried to push aside the pang of betrayal he felt when he saw Sam Wilson sitting on the same couch as Steve. Really, they hardly knew each other and he guessed Sam had told him at that start that he would only break confidentiality if he told him something suggesting he was a threat to himself or others. Clint just hadn't really considered that 'others' would include an international ring of stupidly wealthy rapists.

He tried to meet Natasha's eye, but she was having a staring match with Steve. It was really more of a glare on Natasha's side, more 'rabbit-in-the-headlights' on Steve's.

Clint sat down next to her, not looking and hoping that glare wasn't about to be re-directed at him. He felt her hand touch his arm, and he flinched only because he hadn't been expecting it. Natasha kept up the pressure for a few moments more before she pulled her hand back.

'So is it true?' Steve said, and holy shit was he pissed. Clint almost started to shake, and what the hell was that about? True, he'd never had to deal with an angry Captain America before, not angry at him anyway, but surely that was no reason for the sudden fear. It wasn't like Steve was going to lunge across the room and twist his head off.

'Is what true? You seem to be getting ahead of yourself there Capsicle,' said Tony.

'You know what I'm talking about. And I'm surprised to find you had a hand in all of this - or maybe I shouldn't be.'

There was poison in that tone, and oh god this was all his fault.

'Stop,' Natasha said. 'Tony gave us a room to work in, and nothing else. He's not a part of this.'

'Like hell he isn't. He knew what you were doing and he did nothing to stop it. That makes him culpable in my book. I guess maybe people don't change.'

Clint flinched. He wanted to say something, to try and get Steve's attention off of Tony, but it was like his mouth and brain weren't connected anymore. He couldn't even look up to see the mess he'd created.

'You want to try that again? Say what you actually mean this time instead of--'

This was bad. So bad. Not just what was going on around him but what was happening inside. Couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even see now that his eyes were closed and he couldn't even remember doing that. He was waiting, just waiting for Steve to do whatever he was going to do and now that he thought about it that was kinda like--

'Guys, cool it. Alright, this isn't helping. Just sit down, both of you.'

That was Sam. Sam who he'd trusted so why--

'We're all upset here so--'

'I wasn't until the Star-spangled asshole started making accusations.'

'--so let's talk about this like adults.'

'That's a great idea, Sam.'

And that was Natasha. If Natasha was here, he was safe, he was okay so he shouldn't--

'How many people did you kill?'

That voice was--

--

Natasha had noticed something was wrong with Clint almost at the start. The way his head had dropped forward, and he'd gone almost completely still apart from a small tremor which seemed to run through him whenever things got loud. Or Steve spoke.

She should have stopped things then. But she'd wanted it over with, to let Steve get all of his objections out of his system so she and Clint could explain it to him. She could point to obvious improvements, and there was little question that these people had earned their place on Clint and Natasha's list. She hadn't been paying enough attention though, and Clint had suffered for it.

'It's a simple question, and I want an answer. How many people did you kill?'

She'd hoped Clint would take the lead and answer. It was his crusade after all.

'Eleven,' she said, sighing. 'If you want, I can give you a dossier on each of them. You can see for yourself exactly what kind of people they were.'

'It doesn't matter what kind of people they were, Natasha. You're Avengers. This isn't how we do things.'

She wanted to snap at him that that was what they had been doing - avenging, avenging Clint and every single person who had ever been preyed on by these people. But she thought Clint should be the one to say it.

So she nudged him. A quick elbow to the ribs. The sort of thing he could take now, thanks to their murder spree.

He didn't move. No flinching.

And that could have been a good thing.

Except he really didn't move. Not even to lean away or rub his side where she'd hit him - and she'd hit him hard enough to hurt.

'Clint,' Natasha said.

Steve had started off on some speech about how when they'd joined the team they'd agreed to a certain standard of behaviour and that behaviour did not include spontaneous assassination of public figures.

She wasn't listening anymore.

By now Tony seemed to have noticed something was up.

'Steve, shut up a second,' he said, hopping off the couch and crouching down in front of Clint and Natasha. 'He having a panic attack?'

'I don't know...'

His breathing was quick, but silent. When he'd had the panic attack back at the farm he'd been hyperventilating.

'Clint?' Tony said, snapping his fingers under Clint's face. 'Come on, open your eyes buddy.'

For some reason hearing that Clint had his eyes closed alarmed her. She grabbed hold of his shoulder and shook him.

It was like shaking a rag doll. Like he'd made himself go limp - so he wouldn't get hurt, she thought.

Her stomach dropped.

Because it sounded like a piece of advice she'd heard, from a SHIELD seminar or perhaps even further back. If you can't avoid it, then don't fight it. Minimise damage by relaxing.

'Clint,' she said again, squeezing his arm.

Steve made a noise - and Natasha didn't know if it was a sound of frustration at how Clint was reacting, or if it was the start of an offer to help. She didn't care.

'Get out.'

There was complete silence.

Steve raised his hands.

'Natasha, I didn't mean--'

'Out,' she repeated, rising off of the couch with every intention of doing Steve serious bodily harm if he was still within her sight in ten seconds time.

He got the message, sighing and shaking his head as he left the room.

Natasha sat back down next to Clint, holding onto his forearm.

'Guys, move away from him. Don't crowd,' said Sam.

Tony got off the floor and out of the way, but Natasha couldn't bring herself to let go of Clint.

'Natasha, just move away a little bit. Give him some space for a minute. Hey Stark, can we dim the lights?'

'Done.'

Natasha sat on the far end of the couch, ready to move back to Clint's side if she needed to.

'Clint, can you hear me?' Sam said. 'I need you to talk to us, tell us how to help.'

Nothing but silence.

'Clint, you're in Avengers Tower with me, Tony and Natasha. You're safe, I promise you.'

His hand trembled. It was a tiny movement, one Natasha wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been hyper-focused in on him.

'It's about two-forty pm, and it's Tuesday--'

She heard Clint exhale softly and draw in a loud, shuddering breath.

'Clint?' Natasha asked, stretching forward.

He started to straighten up, rubbing his face and blinking.

'What...?' he muttered, looking around at them. ''Tasha, w-what the fuck just happened?'

He was looking at her, and he was trying to smile but he wasn't fooling her. She knew what he looked like scared.

'I think you might have had a dissociative episode,' said Sam.

Clint moved his head slowly to look at Sam. The way he was moving reminded her of the handful of times SHIELD medical had put him on 'the good drugs', when everything he did seemed to have a five-second delay. She'd never seen a human being manage to fail so hard at drinking water before.

'What? Did I...did I do something?'

He looked back at Natasha, and she saw the fear there. Like he was expecting to hear that he'd turned on them, attacked them and tried to kill them. Again.

She opened her mouth to tell him it was fine, that everything was okay.

'No,' said Tony, beating her to it. 'You didn't. You just kind of sat there all still like some creep out of a horror film. First time I think I've ever seen Natasha almost lose it. I was worried she was gonna start strangling Steve with her thighs...'

Clint flinched, rubbing at his temples. He was trying to smile, to match Tony's attempts to lighten the tone, and Natasha could see what he was doing, putting the walls back up.

'You don't remember, do you?' she said.

Clint froze, like she'd caught him in the act.

'No,' he admitted.

'Clint, that's okay,' Sam said. 'That's pretty normal with dissociation.'

'Ha. Great to know my fucked-upness is normal,' Clint snapped.

'Do you remember what it felt like? What triggered it?'

'You know what? I'm not doing this. I'm not playing along with your psychological bullshit right now,' Clint snarled. And Clint could be bitchy sometimes, but this was something else.

Okay, okay,' said Sam, calmly. 'I'm gonna leave you alone now.'

Clint didn't say anything as Sam left the room. Tony glanced at Natasha before following him.

--

Clint flopped onto his side on the couch.

He felt sick, but that was hardly newsworthy. He ached like he'd been sitting on a damp rooftop for hours and the last half-hour was a hazy picture in his mind.

'Nat,' he mumbled, scared that she might have left the room without him noticing. That he might be on his own completely.

'I'm here.'

He felt her sit down next to him, and yeah, he really needed to sit up so he could see her because he was started to feel just a little bit nervy about having someone practically touching him who was out of his sight. Even though he knew who it was.

But he was tired, like he could just fall asleep right there on the couch, just shut his eyes and be out. And his body still didn't feel quite right, quite real yet, and horizontal felt like it was the best way to be right now.

'Nat, can you--?'

She moved before he even managed to get the words out, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of his face.

'Thanks,' he mumbled. 'So, uh, that was weird.'

'And what exactly was that?'

'Didn't you hear Sam call it dissociate...dissociation or whatever.'

'Forget about what Sam said. Tell me.'

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

'Felt like someone was gonna hurt me,' Clint mumbled, rubbing his thumb against the leathery fabric of the couch. 'Don't know why.'

He waited to see if Natasha would interject. He knew she'd probably already seen he was holding back, so it was just a matter of what her strategy was to get the information out of him.

'Everything just sort of froze. I couldn't move - I thought that if I moved it was gonna be worse, whatever was gonna happen.'

Natasha just listened, so he kept on talking.

'The really messed-up thing...I think...I think I thought that Steve was him, somehow. I don't know how to explain it. I...'

Natasha nodded. Just a simple, short nod. She didn't try to placate him by telling him she understood, or that it was normal, but he knew that she got it - about as much as anyone could.

Clint sighed and relaxed into the couch. If he fell asleep now, then he wouldn't have to deal with Sam's questions, wouldn't have to think about the arguments he'd caused or work out how he was gonna face the others later. Maybe when he woke up things would feel more...more grounded - right now he felt like his body was a shoe with the laces untied, and all his contents were just sort of slip-slopping around inside.

'I'll get you a blanket,' Natasha said, getting up to leave.

'No, you don't have to. I'll get up in a second, I'm just gonna lay here for a bit first.'

She ignored him and came back with one of the heavy, furred blankets that they both liked. He actually had plans to commandeer one of them to take home with him.

She draped it over him. He was out before she even left the room.

--

They'd waited for her.

It was like walking out into the waiting room at an STD clinic, full of awkward, anxious, embarrassed people looking desperately to you to know if they were in the clear or not.

She put her palms on the kitchen counter.

'Is there coffee left for me?' she asked Tony. She was making a point of not even looking in Steve's direction - she would deal with him in due course.

Tony had a mug filled and in her hand in seconds.

She thought about asking for some vodka to add to it, but decided it was better they kept their discussions sober.

'Is he...?' said Steve, apparently struggling to find the right word. He sounded confused by it all, and Natasha had to remind herself it wasn't his fault that Clint's brain had somehow conflated Steve with his rapist. Or maybe it was. Maybe this had started back at the farm when Steve had grabbed Clint and not let go, when Clint had had the flashback.

'He's asleep.'

She didn't look to see his reaction, aware that if she did she'd probably want to punch him. Instead she looked at Sam.

'Did Clint tell you we were going to take out the members of Roth's club?'

'Not exactly. I read between the lines and...I was worried you guys were going to do something reckless and get hurt.'

'He trusted you,' Natasha said.

Sam sighed and looked at her.

'Look, I was concerned about his safety, I was going to talk to you which is when I realised you were gone--'

Natasha rolled her eyes.

'--so I talked to Steve. Steve called Clint to work out where you guys were. We saw the news about the businessman in Tokyo, figured you might be behind that...' He shrugged.

'I'm assuming you mean the poisoning? Yes, that was us.'

'Eleven people, Natasha. How could you let him do that?' Steve said.

He was making it really quite difficult for her not to turn around and punch him in the face. He was sat down too, so she wouldn't even have to take a running leap to reach.

She breathed in and out slowly. In with positivity and light, out with all-thoughts-of-smashing-her-team-leader's-face-through-the-kitchen-table.

'It helped,' she said through gritted teeth.

'I can vouch for that,' said Tony. He was probably thrilled to be the only one in the room she wasn't currently pissed with. 'He was almost back to being Barton.'

Natasha nodded. It was true. She'd been so close to having her best friend back, and all it had taken was a few minutes to rip it all apart again.

'Well that wasn't what I saw back there,' said Steve. 'So either he's getting worse--'

'It was you.'

Steve looked at her, brow furrowed and mouth open.

'You triggered it.'

'Wait, what do you mean Steve triggered it?' said Sam.

She didn't want to tell them what Clint had said. It felt wrong, like she was betraying him as well. But they needed to all be on the same page about this.

'Clint got Steve mixed-up with Roth. He said he felt like he was in danger, so much so that he froze.'

She watched as Steve's face moved through a whole stream of emotions - going from confusion to anger to misery and back again.

'How?' he said.

Natasha shrugged. 'Clint couldn't tell me. But I think maybe when you grabbed him, when he had that flashback before, he got confused and now it's stuck in his head to associate you with being powerless and afraid.'

Steve's face settled on guilt with a side of bewilderment.

'He knows that I'm not-- He knows that I'm not him, right? How the hell did he even get messed up like that?' He looked down at the table in disbelief.

'How do any of us end up the way we are?' Tony said. 'So, here's the thing, when I wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I'm about to die, I know it's just anxiety making my life difficult. But that doesn't stop it happening. I'm pretty sure Barton knows you're not a perverted German man come to drag him back to his underground sex dungeon, not least because Barton killed him - in a way that I am never going to be able to unsee by the way - but that doesn't matter. It's just how it works, and it sucks.'

'Tony...'

Tony shrugged, like what he'd just admitted wasn't a big deal.

'So,' said Steve, 'what do we do? We can't just leave him like this.'

'I was handling it,' said Natasha. 'If we needed your help we'd have asked for it. We didn't tell you about our plan because it was a personal matter and not Avengers business - there was no need for you to be involved. We understood you might object.'

'So you knew it was wrong.'

Natasha smiled.

'Maybe by your standards. But I know I won't be losing any sleep over this.' She wasn't going to wake up remembering their names and faces, from nightmares where she followed the same course over and over - committing sins she could never hope to expiate. This was not more red in her ledger, and no amount of disapproval from Steve Rogers was going to change that.

Steve looked sad, hurt.

'Natasha, that isn't who you have to be anymore. You could have come to us, you and Clint didn't need to do this alone. We could have helped you find another way.'

Tony snorted.

'Like what exactly? You turn up, tell them to stop their rapey ways and problem solved?'

'Surely it's a matter for the police--'

'Oh geez, you are way out of touch. Alright, speaking as a member of the same economic bracket as these...people, we have amazing lawyers. We can get away with a lot of things, up to and including murder. I can guarantee you that whatever evidence Sneaky and Sneakier over there came up with, it wouldn't be enough.'

'So you agree with murdering civilians?'

'Are you wearing a wire or something? Because you sound like you're trying to bait me into saying something morally indefensible so you can use it as a headline for some trash article about what a terrible person I am...'

'Paranoid much,' Natasha said.

'Always,' said Tony, smirking at her.

'What happens if you get to the end of your list and he's not better?' said Sam. 'Have you thought about that?'

Natasha nodded. 'Yes. But you don't know him like I do, and you didn't see him. When we were in Korea he wasn't jumpy when people brushed by, he was relaxed in a way I have not seen for months. He was fine with small public displays of affection--'

Both Sam and Steve looked confused.

'When we're on missions together like this, we pretend to be a couple. It looks far less suspicious and it's a straightforward enough cover for Clint to follow.'

'I told you. She's the work wife!' said Tony.

Natasha wasn't going to let them in on the whole narrative they'd planned out - how they were an American couple who'd grown apart and were now having relationship issues (she'd grown bored with their by-the-book sex life, he'd had an almost-affair with a woman at work) and were taking a vacation together to try and rekindle things. It had taken Clint and Natasha several hours of intense brainstorming until they were happy with the backstories for their tourist alter-egos. Putting together cover stories had never really been something fun until she'd met Clint. There was a strange kind of catharsis to it, plotting out all the other lives you might have lived under different circumstances, trying them on for size.

'Have you considered maybe the reason he was okay was that you're not his wife, he doesn't feel the same responsibility towards you?'

'We are talking about the same Clint Barton, right?' she said. She knew exactly how much he'd risked when he'd brought her in to SHIELD, but he'd done it anyway. When she'd made a mistake, in those first few months, he always stepped in to defend her, even when she didn't want his help and lashed out at him for it. He'd done a similar thing with Wanda. He felt responsible for them.

'It was just a thought,' Sam said. 'I'm just concerned that this isn't healthy--'

'Already said that,' Tony chipped in. 'To be honest, I'm thinking the unhealthy way might be the right one this time.'

Sam seemed to consider this, sighing and then holding up his hands in defeat. 'Alright.'

'Alright?' said Steve. 'So you agree with all this now?'

Sam shrugged. 'I don't know...' he said. 'But if it's what it takes to get Clint back to where he should be...' He shrugged again. 'It's not like he's targeting random, innocent people Steve.'

Steve said nothing, arms folded and staring down at the table.

He stood up.

'I need to think,' he said, and left the room.

Natasha watched him leave, knowing that whatever he chose to do she would continue to do what was necessary to help Clint.

--

'Do you think you could get him to see an actual therapist?' Sam asked Tony.

'He's said no every time I've offered. I think you're wasting your time there.'

Natasha nodded in agreement.

'I think Murder Tour 2016 is really the solution,' she said, mostly to see the look on Sam's face.

'Seriously? You named it?'

'Hey, you're not getting credit for my work. If I have to trademark it I will.' said Tony.

Sam looked between the two of them, horrified. Then he smirked.

'Man, that is awful. You're terrible people, you know that right?'

Natasha smiled.

'I know.'

--

They didn't see Steve again until dinner.

FRIDAY must have told him about the food, and a super-soldier metabolism was hard to argue with.

Tony had erred on the side of caution, and the kitchen table was covered in takeout boxes. Natasha was sure he must have ordered every item on the menu. She had to open half a dozen boxes before she found the kung pao chicken she'd been craving.

She'd considered waking Clint up, but he was still deep asleep and the food would keep anyway.

Steve pretty much ignored her at first, which was fine.

No one talked for the first twenty minutes, between eating and Starkpads everyone was focused on something else.

Then Sam asked Steve if he was alright, and the conversational stalemate was over.

'I've thought about it, and I can't allow it. I'm sorry,' Steve said, looking at her.

Natasha believed he was sorry, and in turn she was sorry that she was going to have to go behind his back.

'I understand,' she said.

She knew what it must look like to him - her and Clint sneaking off, committing murders for personal reasons, against people who were not threats to world-security. It must seem like something villains did. And she was fine with that. She really was.

Something thick and papery thudded on the table, bouncing several empty cartons onto their side and getting sauces everywhere.

'Aw, folder, no.'

Natasha turned her head and saw Clint standing a few feet away, hands still partially raised in their throwing position.

He was still wearing the clothes he'd fallen asleep in, and his hair was showing all the symptoms of bedhead.

'Sorry, guess I'm not as accurate when it comes to heavy-ass folders.'

Natasha finally recognised their victim dossier, the cover of which was now spattered with sweet and sour sauce.

'Clint...'

'I thought Cap might like to read it. Before he decides we're monsters.'

He grinned, and it was all sharp edges.

'Clint, how are you feeling?' asked Sam, while Steve stared down at the folder like it was a dead rat presented to him by his slightly unhinged cat.

'Better. I don't feel like I'm an unlaced boot anymore...wait, that probably sounded crazy. I mean, I feel better. Let's stick with that.'

He pulled a chair out with his foot, snagged the first carton of Chinese food within reach, and grabbed a pair of chopsticks. Natasha wasn't going to bet on him finishing the entire thing, and instead of starting to eat once he pulled the chopsticks apart, he started twirling them around his fingers.

'You don't have to look at it while you're eating. In fact, you probably shouldn't. Sorry, I just thought it might make it easier for you to...understand why I have to do this.'

Steve looked at him. He still hadn't moved from when the dossier had hit the table.

'Clint...are you okay with me being here?'

'What do you mean?'

Then Clint seemed to catch on to the way people were looking at him, like he was waving a gun around or had a bomb strapped to his chest.

Immediately he looked at Natasha, eyes narrowed accusingly.

You told, he signed, still spinning the chopsticks in one hand.

I had to, Natasha replied.

Clint shrugged and looked at Steve.

'Yeah, you're fine.'

He continued spinning the chopsticks for the duration of the meal. Natasha didn't see him eat a bite.

--

Somehow it ended up as a group viewing session.

There was Steve, of course. And then Sam came and sat next to him as some sort of moral support. Clint sat on the opposite side of the table, to make sure Steve didn't miss anything important.

He still seemed to be buzzing with a slightly manic energy, and Natasha didn't know if that was an effect of the dissociation or something else.

After several minutes of indecision, Tony had gone elsewhere - denying his curiosity, but preserving his peace of mind.

'So, er, I didn't really get to hear why you were mad earlier but I thought maybe I could try and...I don't know, make you okay with it. I'm not asking you to support it - I know I'm probably breaking whatever kind of superhero code of ethics there is - I just need you to understand. Please.'

Steve sighed and pulled the dossier towards him. He flipped it open.

Natasha knew the contents, knew he'd now be looking at an analysis of Roth's communications. She did the same thing Clint was doing, keeping a close watch on Steve's face.

'We got a lot of names straight from Roth's communications,' Clint said, seemingly just to fill the silence. He drummed his fingers on his knee, as Steve read through emails which detailed Roth's plans for Clint, his assessment of his body, self-congratulation on the use he'd put Clint's deafness to - and a recommendation to a fellow 'owner' on how she might utilise his techniques.

There were even references to one of Roth's previous 'pets', and an email he had sent expressing his regret at having to have him 'put down' for 'unacceptable behaviour'. Natasha thought she could pinpoint the exact moment Steve read those lines, because of the way his face drained of colour.

It took longer than she expected.

She knew Steve could read and understand incredibly quickly, but he didn't breeze through the dossier like she thought he would.

She knew Steve had seen at least some of the darkest parts of humanity, the callousness they could display to one another, but perhaps this was different. It took longer to really digest.

It certainly seemed to give Sam a chance to read most of what was on the page.

'Clint, I'm sorry...' he said, looking up from the page.

Natasha wasn't sure exactly what the apology was for, and Clint just shrugged at him as if to say: it's fine.

The rest of the dossier was divided up up between each of their targets.

Natasha got a disapproving look, when Steve got to the transcript of their torture session with Morris, but Clint stepped in.

'I asked her to. Didn't think I'd be able to hold back...It was my idea.'

'We don't do torture, Clint,' Steve said. 'It's not...I mean we can't.'

'I know, I know. We're supposed to be the good guys.' Clint leaned forward onto the table, folding his arms and resting his head on them. 'Thing is, I'd do it again. I know that's not what you want to hear, but...' He shrugged. 'He killed a kid. For no reason other than it's what gets him off.'

Natasha thought she saw Steve wavering. But Clint kept talking.

'It's not as if we did anything that horrible to him. I mean I've had fingernails torn out before too...' He shrugged again. 'Once we had what we needed, I made it quick.'

Steve was looking at Clint like he was a stranger, and Natasha could see it was making Clint uncomfortable.

'Don't look at me like that,' he said, finally, and Steve went back to reading.

Clint continued to chime in now and again, adding extra details and occasionally telling Steve how certain hits had occurred. It was like he was reporting to a SHIELD handler - like he was reporting to Coulson. Natasha recognised that particular brand of talkativeness from when an op had gone off-script and Clint knew he'd have to justify himself.

'Why couldn't you just take this...all this evidence, and hand it in to the authorities?' Steve asked.

Natasha had expected Clint to laugh at Steve like Tony had. Instead Clint just smiled at him; a weary, sad smile.

'The police used to get called to my house sometimes, when I was little. My mom would answer the door and she'd have all these bruises on her - one time her nose was still bleeding while she talked to the cops. Nothing ever happened. The only thing that changed would be that my dad would be madder than usual for a couple of days - for some reason he'd blame either me or Barney for the cops being there, like we'd done something bad to make them come. It'd be so obvious what was happening, but they never did anything. I get now that legally there was nothing much they could do - if my mom said she'd busted her nose up walking into a door then who were they to disagree - but it wasn't right. Every time they'd pull up outside I'd have this hope that maybe this time would be the one where my dad got shoved in the back of a cop car, and he'd finally leave us alone. That hope got crushed every single time. I'm not doing that to someone else - giving them that hope that this time the nightmare's gonna end only to have it drag on.'

Steve looked at Clint and nodded, before lowering his eyes back to the pages.

Natasha saw the relief on his face when he made it to the final page.

'If I were you I'd go look for a cute animal playlist. You're gonna want at least a couple of hours of puppies and baby ducks to counteract all that horribleness,' said Clint. 'Don't expect your faith in humanity to come back overnight - that one's gonna take a few months to heal at least.'

Steve actually smiled at that.

Clint leaned forward to pull the dossier back.

'Do it,' Steve said. 'Finish the list.'

Clint's shoulder sagged a little in relief, but his voice sounded no different from before.

'Wasn't waiting for your permission, Cap. Just wanted to make sure you weren't gonna drag my ass to superhero jail over this.'

He turned his head and beamed at Natasha.

'You hear that, Nat? Phase two is on!'

Chapter Text

Clint couldn't stop shaking.

A few hours ago he hadn't been able to move, and now he couldn't stop. He felt like yelling at his body to make up its damn mind.

'You need to eat something,' Natasha said when she walked into their room and he was sat on the floor by the bed, trembling.

He'd left her working and gone to go to bed, but then the shakes had hit and he'd ended up on the floor with his back against the wall. He wasn't sure if Friday had snitched again, or if it actually had been hours since he'd walked in the door.

'What the fuck is wrong with me?' he groaned, putting his face in his hands .

'You want a list?' Natasha said.

'I told Steve we ripped out a guy's fingernails. Why the fuck would I do that? I was trying to convince him that we weren't amoral killing machines.'

Natasha crouched down with a glass of orange juice.

'Drink. You're probably shaking because your blood sugar's low.'

He took the glass and gulped it down.

'Actually, I'm proud of you...'

He looked up and wondered if he was having a break with reality or if Natasha had really said those words.

'I worried you might try to hide away, but you didn't. You faced your fears.'

He grimaced at the corniness and Natasha smiled back at him.

'I talked about my mom. Why the hell did I tell him about my mom?' he said.

Because now he was thinking about it, for the first time in years. About his mom telling the officers that everything was fine, protecting the man who terrorised her and her children - the man who would one day kill her.

He'd hated her for it, had been unable to understand it. It had made even less sense to him after he'd had kids - Clint would die for his children, and she hadn't. She'd died for an asshole who'd never treated her right a single day Clint could remember.

Somewhere along the line though, he'd come to accept it.

To recognise the challenges she'd faced.

He'd seen statistics - knew how hard it would have been for her to take him and his brother and leave, but he wished she'd at least tried.

'You needed him to understand,' Natasha said. 'It's not weakness, to open up like that to a friend...'

'Look who's talking,' Clint said with a smirk. 'Getting you to talk about yourself used to be like pulling teeth. I was never sure if what I was getting was the truth, or just one of your personas.'

She smiled at him.

The sugar from the fruit juice seemed to be doing the trick, because the shaking was subsiding.

He finally got up off the floor. He went to start getting changed to get into bed, but Natasha cut him off.

'Food first. We agreed.'

'Fine,' he sighed.

For all his complaining, it felt nice to have someone care about him.

--

'Looks like some of them are trying to go to ground,' said Natasha.

'Yeah, badly,' said Clint.

If he was hiding out from an unknown killer, who had already offed a number of his friends, he would not choose his vacation home in the Seychelles. Sure, it was remote - but that was about it.

'Guess we can expect better security,' he said. 'Aw, this one would have been so easy if he didn't have the wife. The house is pretty much all glass. I could do it from a boat - we wouldn't even have to step foot on the island!'

'It's going to be hard for him though - not a lot of opportunities to indulge himself,' she said, giving Clint a knowing smirk.

'Now, if only one of us was a teenage twink we could lure the guy in ourselves.'

Clint turned back to the screen.

Most of their targets seemed to have hired new or additional bodyguards. It was annoying, Clint wanted to avoid hurting someone just trying to do their job - but then he thought of Roth's bodyguards.

They'd been the ones to restrain him, whenever the cuffs came off. They'd done their jobs efficiently and dispassionately - none of them seemed to share their employer's tastes - and Clint could only assume either money or fear was behind their decision to stay. Roth hadn't seemed the type to command loyalty like that.

He knew that every name on the list had to have people like that; the ones who helped them, cleaned up after them, kept their secrets for them. When Roth had gotten tired of him, it would probably be those same men who'd be the ones to put a bullet in his brain, to load him up into a boat and dump his weighted-down body in the ocean.

'Clint,' Natasha said. 'Come on, we're taking a break.'

He blinked, no choice but to follow when she pulled him up by the back of his shirt and dragged him out of the room.

--

'I could see your eyes starting to change,' Natasha said, handing him a bottle of water from the fridge. 'I didn't want you to have another episode.'

'Nat, I'm okay. I just got in my head a little, thinking about...' He trailed off when he saw how she was looking at him. 'Nat, I'm fine. I can do this.'

'I can manage alone. It'll take a little longer, but I can do it. You can go home, and I'll--'

'Nat, no. I want to do this. Don't worry, I'm not going to freeze on you. You can trust me.'

'It's not a matter of not trusting you,' said Natasha. 'I don't want you to get hurt, idiot.'

Clint smiled.

'I'll be fine. We just do everything like before, okay?'

--

Their first stop was the Bahamas.

The target was on vacation with his wife and daughter; a daughter who bore every resemblance to the girls he routinely bought, mutilated and destroyed.

His name was one of the ones they got from Morris, not strictly part of the club. Apparently there were some things which were pushing the limits even for them.

The family had booked into an luxury villa on a private island.

There were just over a dozen houses, and a central hub with a restaurant and spa. Access was by boat or helicopter.

With SHIELD behind them, infiltration wouldn't have been a problem. But with just the two of them, they had to be more careful.

It would have been simplest to just go in by boat under the cover of night, break into the guy's house and blow his brains out before he had a chance to so much as get out of bed, but that wasn't an option.

So Natasha ended up dyeing her hair platinum blonde, donning a pair of Gucci sandals and a designer sundress, and booking a beachfront bungalow only a few hundred feet from their target. It had taken some work on FRIDAY's part - making sure the property was untenanted during the relevant time frame and making Natasha's reservation under an assumed name.

Natasha made contact with the target, and fed him piece by piece a story setting herself up as the perfect potential victim. She played a young heiress who had gotten her inheritance but now was alone in the world - no boyfriend, no relatives who would come looking. Clint had watched Natasha practice, going through different expressions, practising gestures over and over until she was satisfied.

While Nat drew their target in, Clint was on a boat moored just off the coast. It was boring as hell, and he managed to get sunburned within a couple of hours despite applying sunscreen. There was a certain peace to it though.

Eventually he got a text, signalling that they were ready to proceed with the next part of their plan.

Somehow Natasha had worked into conversation that she'd met a man with a boat, and he'd offered to take her out to see some of the smaller islands. She asked the target if he wanted to join them.

Whether it was the hint of a potential rival, the prospect of finding a good place to dispose of the body, or simply the opportunity to spend more time with her, Clint couldn't tell. But the target said yes.

--

From there it was a foregone conclusion.

Clint knew it was a bad idea to get too much blood on the boat, but when Nat gave the signal - when they were far enough out and away from view - he couldn't help but think of the way the man had been eyeing up Nat. Like he was choosing what parts he'd work on first.

He punched him, just a few times. He bled like a stuck pig though. After they had him tied up securely, Clint had to get down on his hands and knees and pick the teeth which had scattered over the deck.

'We're sinking the boat anyway, what does it matter?' he muttered.

'It's sloppy,' said Natasha. 'You've missed one. Look, over there.'

--

They weighed him down with rocks, knotting them together and attaching them to the ropes which crisscrossed his body.

'...so there's this whale, and they show it sinking down to the bottom of the ocean. And then it gets interesting. There's all these eels, hagfish I think they're called, and they're all sort of working together so they can get inside and get to the good stuff. You wouldn't believe how little time it takes for them to really strip a carcass down. Course you'll be dead by that point, so you don't need to worry about that.'

Clint smiled down at their victim.

They'd gagged him. It had taken them a while to attach all those rocks, and neither of them wanted to be whined at for that length of time.

'Still, it's a better way to go than some. Although I've heard drowning's pretty painful. At least I'm not gonna make you beg for it though.'

Because Clint had no doubt those girls had begged - with what had been done to them they had to have begged for it to be over. There was no evidence he'd ever granted their requests; no slit throats or snapped necks, no single mortal blow. They'd simply been overwhelmed.

Even between them it was hard work getting him overboard. Clint almost fell in, but it was satisfying to see the bubbles coming up, once the body had disappeared from view.

--

'Uh-oh, trouble in paradise,' Clint said.

They'd gone straight from one set of tropical islands to another - the Seychelles. They'd also bought another boat.

It turned out revenge was expensive.

Natasha picked up her binoculars.

'Hmm, maybe she'll kill him before we do,' she commented.

It was late evening and Clint and Natasha could see every detail of the argument unfolding in the house two-thousand feet away.

'How do you live in a place like that? I mean, the whole neighbourhood can just see right in.'

'What neighbourhood?' said Natasha.

'That's not the point,' Clint said.

Their target had seemingly paid for seclusion in an almost Stark-like display of wealth. His house was the only one on the island and had its own helipad.

Besides him and the wife, there were two security types who probably thought they'd landed the cushiest job ever. Neither could be remotely considered as a 'twink'.

'Can't say I blame her for being pissed,' Natasha said. 'The place is practically a prison.'

Clint hummed in agreement. It had to be a prison for both of them. He almost felt sorry for the guy - well, not really. Compared to their last target he was practically a saint, but Clint knew there were ways to hurt people without an ounce of physical pain.

--

'Got movement,' Clint said. 'Target heading down to the beach.'

Natasha stirred from her doze. Clint heard her walk up beside him and reach for her binoculars.

'On second thought, you, uh, might not want to do that...'

'Why?' Natasha asked.

'He's masturbating. Just straight up masturbating, right there on the beach.'

'So he is.'

He glanced to the side and saw she already had the binoculars up to her face with a disgusted smirk on her lips.

They continued watching, and Clint couldn't help but feel that this was the absolute low-point of his career. Not the things he'd done with Loki. Not all the innocent people he'd killed on SHIELD's orders or the crimes he'd committed with the circus. No, it was this. Watching a sick, twisted, desperately unhappy man sobbing and fondling his junk with a fistful of wet sand.

'I'm starting to feel like we might be doing this guy a favour...'

--

The masturbation turned into a routine, and Clint and Natasha began working on a plan.

Clint was familiar with bowfishing from his circus days - it had been a good way to practice his skills and earn him brownie points with the folk who got to share his catch.

The boat they'd got was a former fishing boat equipped with a winch.

It took them a day to get familiar with the workings of the winch, and to test that their method would work.

'We've got to be attracting sharks by now,' Clint said, tossing another mangled fish carcass into the water.

His grappling arrows were designed to embed deep into concrete. Punching through a fish, even after travelling through water, was like punching through paper.

'Just don't fall in this time,' Natasha said.

'I did not fall in. Like, a toe at most.'

--

They waited until nightfall, when their target sneaked down to the beach and unbuckled his pants.

There'd been a lengthy discussion that afternoon on where was best to shoot him.

Clint shot him in the neck, specifically through the larynx so he couldn't scream.

They started up the winch and reeled in their catch.

Natasha didn't rub it in his face when the man came in whole, his head still very much attached despite the distance he'd been dragged. Clint just shrugged. No doubt if he'd been the one saying the head would stay on, there'd be a headless corpse bobbing about in the water right about now.

The target was still alive, somehow. The shot had been non-lethal, but Clint had expected the pressure on his windpipe, or the water, to be enough to finish him off.

Natasha snapped his neck.

She had to work around the arrow still stuck through his neck, but she managed it.

Clint had less success retrieving his arrow.

'Fuck this...I think I'm just gonna have to cut his head off.'

'Here, let me help.'

She pulled one way, he pulled the other, and finally the arrow came free in a splattering of gore which landed them both on their asses on opposite ends of the deck.

Clint looked at Natasha, or as much as he could see of her in the moonlight, and laughed.

--

Their next port of call was Dubai.

Compared to the previous two it was straightforward. Natasha went in to his workplace, disguised as usual, did the deed right in his office, while Clint watched her back and made sure her exit route remained clear.

They scratched another name off the list, and moved on.

--

Next up was London.

They took this one out at the museum where he worked. Clint would have loved the chance to look around more - they'd spent the previous two days around the place doing reconnaissance, but they'd only scratched the surface of everything there was to see.

Clint wondered what the man's 'girlfriend' would do with him gone. If there was any trace left of the girl she'd been before, maybe she'd pull through. If not...

Some rescues just came too late, he supposed.

--

After London came France.

Their first stop was Paris.

Clint should have known it was a bad idea.

Natasha had asked him several times if he was okay with the plan - that they could change it, find another way.

But he'd insisted.

So here he was, sitting in a bar waiting for their target to see if their target would show.

He'd swapped his usual hearing aids out for something chunkier, more obvious.

Their target this time was obsessed with disability. With how people compensated for the loss of a sense, or a limb, with brain injuries and nerve injuries, chronic pain. She was a doctor, born into a line of doctors, and married to a surgeon she'd later divorce.

She was part of Roth's club mostly because of the services she provided - both general healthcare and a small selection of 'modifications' she was willing to perform for others. Clint wasn't sure how he'd managed to hold onto his lunch while reading through messages arranging abortions, sterilisations and castrations.

And this was the woman Clint hoped was going to take him home.

He was drumming his fingers against the table until he made himself stop, and reminded himself that this was the simplest solution.

Wherever she went she brought at least two of her pet projects with her. Clint guessed some kind of brain damage, or perhaps just really good conditioning, because the men followed her like dogs, attending to her like she was a queen. There were five in total that Clint and Natasha had counted, most mutilated in some visible way. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth.

Natasha would have played bait, but this target had no interest in women. Natasha had even suggested they break the rules they'd set, and kill the woman in the home she shared with her teenage daughter.

'There's no way she doesn't know what's going on,' Natasha had said. 'Not with her mother's toys out on display all the time.'

Clint suspected it was only the well-behaved ones who got to come out and play at the big house though.

Their target owned a second property in Paris, an historic townhouse with a soundproofed cellar which their research told them contained an operating theatre. Clint wondered what the people who had helped her install it thought she was going to do with it.

It was this second location that Clint was counting on being taken to. It seemed like the only window they had for getting her alone without innocent people potentially getting caught in the crossfire.

He heard Natasha in his ear warning him that the target was on her way.

'Clint, you can still walk away if you want to.'

It was great to know she had faith in him.

--

The target entered flanked by two men, as they'd expected.

Clint watched as she murmured something to them and sent them up to the bar, presumably to get drinks.

Clint recognised a hunter at work.

She was wearing a rather simple dress which was probably both very expensive and very stylish. Natasha would be able to tell him. All Clint knew was that it was doing amazing things for her tits.

It was just an observation.

If Laura had been there she wouldn't have been mad at him for noticing, would probably even have agreed with him, but somehow he couldn't shake off the slimy, insistent feeling that he was doing something wrong.

She knew what looked good on her body, and was using it to draw people in.

Clint saw her scan the room, and met her gaze for a few seconds before he looked away in pretend embarrassment. He caught her smiling out of the corner of his eye.

She got her drink, and then she waved off her two pets to a far corner of the bar. She settled herself at a table opposite Clint, rolling her shoulders in a way that made her chest stand out even more. She shot a look his way.

Clint waited, trying to give the impression he was building his courage. She'd want shy, submissive - something she could break and mould without much effort.

He counted to ten inside his head, then got up.

--

'Ah, you are American!'

Somehow she made it sound like both an exotic delicacy and a disease.

--

Within thirty minutes she was asking about his ears. She played it off as professional interest, but it still grated on him.

'So you were not born like this? But you adapt. And without the...the how-you-call-them, in your ear, you hear very little, yes? You know the sign language?'

Her accent reminded him of the circus, of his mentor, and that added on top of the fact he was talking to a modern day Doctor Mengele was enough to make him nauseous.

He knew that if left to go to the bathroom she would most likely spike his drink with something, and without knowing what it was he would have no chance of successfully faking its effects.

So he stayed.

He answered her questions, flirted back and tried not to bolt when she began to lean on him, to squeeze his arms and murmur in appreciation.

When she whispered in his ear - it took every ounce of self-control not to grab her by the throat and choke her - he nodded, and they got up to leave.

She signalled to her companions, and once they were outside she introduced them.

'This is Jean-Claude, he is my driver, and this is Pierre, he is my protection.'

Neither man so much as nodded in Clint's direction, all their attention on their mistress.

'So, like a bodyguard?' Clint said. He didn't have to fake the edge of nervousness.

'Yes. But don't worry, they won't bother us. Jean-Claude, my home, if you please?'

Clint wondered if there was some kind of code in there, a signal to Jean-Claude to go to the townhouse rather than the mansion in the suburbs.

If he wanted to run, now was his chance.

--

She tried to stick her hands down his pants during the drive.

He kept quiet.

--

'How do you feel about handcuffs, mon cheri?'

Her smile was wide. Too many teeth. She looked like a shark, swimming closer.

--

The next thing he knew was someone was trying to take off his clothes.

He tried to grab the wrist so he could snap it, get it away from him, but it twisted out of his grasp.

Someone was calling his name. His real name. Not the fake one he'd used when...

'Clint, it's me. Alright? It's Natasha. You're okay.'

Her voice was soft. If he didn't know better, he'd have said she was scared.

'You're okay,' she repeated, like she was trying to convince herself. And maybe this was a hallucination, because Natasha never sounded like that.

He raised his head, and saw her face - it sure looked like her, but maybe...

'Clint, you're covered in blood. You need to change, and then we need to go. Alright?'

She spoke slowly, and he realised why her voice was so soft.

He was only hearing out of one ear.

He reached up slowly to the side of his head, and yes, the hearing aid was gone.

'Clint,' Natasha said. 'I need to get you out of those clothes. Is that alright?'

He nodded, and it felt like his head was miles away and full of clouds, or wool or something.

Natasha reached out towards his midriff again, grasping the hem of his shirt.

He lifted his arms so she could get it over his head, and he felt the dampness dragging over his skin.

He could smell it now, clear as anything.

The unmistakable smell of blood.

'S'not mine?' he said. And again he felt that delay, like he was stretched out, spread out between different planes of reality. Like he was slipping out.

'No. It's not. I need to get your pants off. Are you okay with that?'

Again he nodded. He'd offer to do it himself but he doubted his hands were coordinated enough to manage undoing a belt.

For some reason he felt relief.

Because if his pants were still on that meant...

He flinched when Natasha's knuckles brushed skin.

'Sorry,' she said, and there was something definitely up with her voice. It was gentler, more soothing.

Like she was dealing with a frightened child.

'What happened?' he asked.

'I'll tell you later,' she said, carefully pulling his pants down to his knees. He tried to move to make it easier.

She eased his shoes off, and Clint finally managed to look past her and at the room he was in.

There was only one table lamp on and the shade was askew, throwing a puddle of light up onto one wall while leaving the rest of the room dark.

He made out a studded couch and an old-fashioned looking fireplace.

It looked like a living room.

'I need to clean some of the blood off you. Is that alright?'

'You keep asking...'

He remembered going up stairs. Winding stairs, several flights.

'Just making sure you don't try to pull my arm off this time,' she said, smiling so he knew she wasn't mad.

She pulled out some wipes and brought one up to his face. He felt the coolness and it brought him back a little, started to pull the different pieces back together.

The print on the wallpaper came sharply into focus, along with the specks of outside light reflected on the chandelier.

He didn't remember this room.

'Okay. I need to see your hands. Does anything hurt anywhere?'

'Don't think so,' Clint said.

Natasha cleaned his hands. Everything in him felt like it was focused on just his hands - on her touch and the feel of the damp cloth dragging over his skin.

She finished, balling up the wipes and putting them in a plastic bag. His bloodied clothes were in there too.

'Put these on.'

She shoved a t-shirt and some sweatpants into his hands. He started fumbling with the t-shirt, pulling it down over his head.

He wasn't sure where she'd got it from. Or where the wipes and the plastic bag had come from. Probably from somewhere in the house.

Clint tried not to wonder too much about whose clothes he was putting on.

Once he was done and his shoes were back on, Natasha helped him up. She had his jacket in her hands, and the last place he remembered leaving it was in that woman's bedroom...

'Nat?'

'I'll tell you everything when we're back at the hotel,' she promised.

She pushed the jacket into his hands and he struggled to put it on, following her out of the room.

There was the staircase, spiralling upwards. He remembered going up, but not coming down. He looked down at his feet, at the diamond shape tiles as they stepped out into the hall.

There was blood, a pool of it and then a drag pattern leading to one of the other rooms. The door was shut, and the drag marks disappeared under it.

This was all starting to feel a too little familiar.

Chapter Text

here were scratches on his arms.

He saw them when he went into the bathroom, determined to wash the blood off himself.

They were defensive wounds. Somebody else's defensive wounds - from nails scratching at his forearms.

They weren't deep, hardly breaking the skin, and Clint remembered the woman's hands. Her nails had been short, kept trimmed so they wouldn't interfere with her work.

He shuddered and stepped under the hot water, scrubbing at the dried patches of blood on his chest until the water down around his feet ran clear.

During the walk back to the hotel all the aches and pains he'd been too numb to feel before revealed themselves.

Nothing felt broken, only sore and bruised.

There was a lump on his head that he only discovered when he went to wash his hair and the sting radiated around his scalp.

He hoped for a memory to put with the pain, but no such luck. There was just a gaping hole in his memory, like what had happened back at the tower, only worse - because this time he knew he hadn't just sat there checked out for ten minutes. The bloody shirt proved that.

--

'So, how badly did I fuck up?'

He walked back into the bedroom. He was clean, back in his own clothes and with both hearing aids in - he should have felt better, but he didn't.

Natasha gestured for him to come sit on the bed, where she was sat cross-legged with a laptop.

'Depends on your definition,' she said, putting the laptop on the bedside-table. 'But we can cross Justine Laurent off the list. You strangled her.'

'Then the blood...?'

She was looking at him carefully - like she was assessing how stable he was, how much he could take. To be honest, that probably was what she was doing. He did his best to look less fragile, less desperate.

He felt like he already knew the answer, could piece it together in his head even without his memory.

Maybe she'd managed to scream, and then her pets had come running.

'It was self-defence, Clint,' Natasha said, firmly, like there could be no argument.

'Were you there? Did you see?'

And if he'd been trying not to seem desperate then he was failing miserably.

Natasha looked at him, exuding calm and self-control and everything he wasn't.

'How much do you remember?' she asked.

'Last thing I think...she tried to cuff me to the bedpost after I said no. Guess I panicked,' he said, sighing and rubbing his face. 'Sorry, you tried to tell me I wouldn't be able to handle it.'

She didn't deny it, because of course she'd known it was stupid right from the start. When he'd said he was okay, she'd trusted him. He'd broken that trust, could have screwed everything up, got them both killed. He wasn't safe to--

'Stop,' Natasha said, leaning forward putting her hands on his knees.

He felt the warmth and the pressure.

It wasn't like before, when he'd felt so contaminated that he couldn't stand being touched.

'It's like my brain's a fucking whack-a-mole. Every time I get one thing under control, another thing pops up,' he sighed.

He flopped over onto his side on the hideously patterned bedspread. The adrenaline had long since gone, and he was left with a resounding tiredness.

Natasha had withdrawn her hand when he moved, but once he'd settled again she replaced it, placing her palm on his upper arm.

It felt nice - calming. It almost felt like it had before Roth, before it had been used against him.

'What did I do?' he asked, pleading with her to just be honest with him.

'I don't know exactly what you did. All I can do is offer you my opinion,' she said. 'One of them heard the noise, and attacked you. He had a knife. There was a struggle, and you stabbed him.'

'God, you sound like my fucking defence attorney.'

Natasha narrowed her eyes at him.

'The amount of blood that was all over you, I think you stabbed him while he was on top of you - to get him off you. The other one fell over the balcony. Whether he fell, was pushed or jumped is up to you. It's over, alright?'

She saw right through him when he shrugged and mumbled his agreement.

'Clint, if I'd killed you back on the helicarrier when you tried to kill me, would that have been my fault?'

He saw the trap coming like it was a giant-ass spiderweb right there in front of his face, and Natasha was there in the middle waiting for him to walk into it.

'No.'

He couldn't make himself lie - if a similar thing ever happened again he didn't want Nat hesitating or torturing herself with guilt. She didn't deserve that.

'How come it took you so long to get inside?' he said.

'I was in the alley around the back,' she said. It was where they were supposed to rendezvous after Clint had quietly and quickly dispatched the target. 'The basement window was the closest.'

She went quiet for a moment.

'I saw some of her 'works-in-progress' down there',' she continued, her voice flat.

Clint didn't want to know.

He really didn't want to know.

But if she needed to talk, he'd listen.

--

Nat insisted they sleep afterwards, even though the sun was already coming up. The cheap, thin curtains in the hotel room did hardly anything to keep the sunlight out, so Clint pulled the covers up over his eyes and curled up until he could only just feel the faintest hints of gold through his eyelids.

He didn't dream, and he was absurdly grateful for that - his nightmares would have been filled with stitched up mouths, empty eyes and amputated limbs.

If Nat dreamt, she didn't show it.

--

They drove south, towards the Mediterranean coast.

Clint watched the landscape and architecture around them change. Roofs were covered in red tiles, the ground became dustier and everywhere was the sound of cicadas. And then, on the horizon, mountains.

The roads were an adrenaline junkie's wet dream. Hairpin turns and crumbling barriers - if there even were barriers at all - with sheer rock on one side and deep ravines on the other. There was barely enough room for two cars to pass in some places and every corner felt like it might be your last.

They hadn't bothered with a sat-nav, opting instead for print-outs of the drone footage they'd taken of the next target's home, the route drawn out in marker pen and the sheets neatly numbered.

Natasha drove, while Clint gave out instructions as they climbed higher into the mountains.

Target number sixteen mostly worked from home, with the occasional commute up to Paris, to Andorra where most of his assets were managed or to Monaco to be with his mistress.

Clint got kicked out of the car some distance from the target's house.

He wasn't sure who'd drawn the short straw on this one. Sure, he had to hike and climb a mile and a half on a hot summer day, but Natasha was the one who had to turn around on this nightmare road.

'Try not to die,' he told her as he left, only four-fifths kidding.

She smirked at him, and Clint heard the brakes actually creaking as she pulled away and headed on up the hill.

He hoped the car would hold it together better than he could.

--

Clint picked his perch.

He made sure he had a clear view of the front of the house and the driveway.

'In position,' he said into his comm. 'Target's still at home.'

e waited for Natasha to respond, and with each second that went by he became more and more convinced that she was at the bottom of a gorge somewhere in the smoking wreckage of that piece of shit car they'd bought.

'Got it,' she said, finally.

'Jeez, don't do that to me Nat,' he muttered.

He shifted in the tree, trying to make himself comfortable. He didn't know how long he was going to be stuck up there, but he had secured himself to the tree with climbing gear and had plenty of food and water in his backpack.

He'd brought binoculars, but from this distance he probably wouldn't need them. Besides, they made it harder to see the big picture, to really get a sense of what was in front of you.

From his position, he had a pretty good view through the kitchen and into what looked like a living room.

The first thing he noticed was how bare it all looked. Nothing out of place. No toys on the floor - even though he knew that there were three kids living there.

A chill went through him, and maybe it was just the sweat starting to dry and the breeze that was starting up.

A woman came into view.

They'd seen her face on a missing poster, in the photograph her parents had clutched in front of them when they'd begged for her return.

And then there were the wedding photos, the holiday pictures and the occasional shot from the society pages where she stood beside her captor with a brittle smile on her face.

She padded across the kitchen tiles and everything about the way she was moving was setting off alarm bells.

Her arms were wrapped around her middle, her shoulders were hunched. She moved around the kitchen like she wasn't supposed to be there, like she'd broken in and was living in one of the cupboards.

While she washed dishes, the edges of her cardigan moved and fell away from her neck and Clint saw something.

He picked up the binoculars to confirm it.

Bruises.

A yellowing blotch by her collar bone. A darker patch on her neck.

As she lifted her arms from the soapy water he caught a glimpse of the bruises on her wrists as well.

He saw the man approach seconds before she sensed him. She went rigid. Clint saw her try to put a smile on her face, forcing the corners of her mouth up, before she turned her head towards him.

There was a sick sense of disbelief, of is-this-really-happening, as the first hit came to the side of her face.

He must have made a sound, before Nat was in his ear asking what was wrong and she sounded worried.

Clint had a bow. They'd swung past an old SHIELD weapons cache and it had had a compound bow and even a few trick arrows. He was already reaching forward before he made himself stop.

'He's hitting her...' he said.

'Clint,' Natasha said, and he knew she was warning him to stick to the plan. The plan they'd agreed to so that nobody innocent would get hurt, so they wouldn't get caught.

He dug his fingernails into his palm.

From out here he couldn't hear the argument. He didn't know what had started it.

He knew that didn't matter though.

It was never really about what they said it was about.

The target had her shoved back up against the cabinets with his hand on her neck. He wasn't squeezing, not trying to choke her - if he did, Clint was putting an arrow through him and fuck the consequences - but keeping the threat there. He loomed over her, uncomfortably close and staring into her face.

It was all standard intimidation, the kind of stuff Clint laughed at when people tried it with him. Because he'd seen more than enough of it.

He wondered where the kids were, in the house, if they could hear the sounds of their dad beating their mom. He wondered if he ever hit them.

His fingernails sunk deeper into his palm.

It ended as suddenly as it had begun, with the man stepping back just enough for her to get by and go back to the dishes.

He lingered for a few minutes more before he left.

Clint could still see her shaking long after.

--

'But why can't we just push him off the cliff like this?' Clint whined.

'Because then we have to go all the way down to the bottom to check if he's dead or not.'

'Not if I shoot the gas tank from up here, blow the whole thing up.' He mimed an explosion.

Their target was currently sat, with his wrists bound and a gag tied tightly around his mouth, in the front seat of his sports cars.

Ironically, being a good Samaritan had been his undoing. Though Clint really doubted altruism had been one of the driving forces behind him stopping his car to help a fellow motorist in need. It probably had more to do with Natasha, the dress she was wearing and the naive, college-girl abroad act she'd put on.

'The fire'll destroy pretty much everything.'

Clint was sure he was listening to every word they said.

It had been hard work positioning the car, getting it to the point where all it needed was a few seconds of focused effort to see it over the edge.

Natasha looked down into the gorge, and then back at him.

She had a point, there were a lot of trees down there to block his view. But Clint liked a challenge.

If you miss, you're the one going down there to check.'

'Deal.'

They did a few final checks, making sure the area was clear, that the path of descent all looked good. Then Clint and Natasha worked together to push the car the rest of the way over the edge.

It looked as cool as Clint had imagined, the car tumbling and bouncing off of rocks, spinning and leaving a trail of debris in its wake. It came to a stop in a shower of broken glass, squashed but still recognisably car-shaped.

Clint didn't miss.

And he hoped the guy had survived the fall long enough to feel the flames.

--

Their target in Italy was an American expatriate living in a villa on the Amalfi Coast with his wife and two children.

His public persona was flawless - no evidence of domestic abuse, likeable and humble according to most people, a great father...

No one seemed to know anything about the woman in the outbuilding on the edge of the property, at least not until Clint and Natasha left an anonymous tip for the Italian police.

They also left the target face-down in a cave on the seafront, bobbing with the motions of the tide.

He'd fed her on leftovers and kept her in the dark for two years.

--

Russia was their penultimate stop.

He teased Natasha pretty much constantly - the more annoyed she was at him, the less likely she was to be thinking about her fucked-up childhood.

He was on edge himself.

Just walking through the streets felt like he was swimming through a shark tank with an open wound.

It was hard not to be paranoid, especially in his line of work. And he'd pissed off so many Russians. A lot of Russians.

And now he was about to piss off even more.

--

Their first target made things easy for them.

He'd sent away his wife and son and holed himself up with a dozen bodyguards.

The guy was half out of his mind with terror, screaming down the phone at anyone he thought might be able to help him.

While pacing and yelling he came in front of an uncovered window and Clint took the shot.

--

Targets two and three lived in Moscow and St Petersburg respectively.

There wasn't much scope for creativity, and really Clint just wanted to get out of the country without being black-bagged.

He shot them both. One in the back seat of his car in the middle of his morning route to work, the other at night as he met with a totally legitimate business associate on a river dock.

--

Their final target, in a bunker up past the arctic circle in Sweden, was not playing around.

He'd surrounded himself with a fucking minefield, covered over with a thick blanket of snow.

It took two days, a lot of grappling line and some serious upper-body strength for them to cross it. There were clear craters in the snow and the occasional piece of animal carcasses where mines had gone off before.

Clint hoped the guy had a map somewhere showing where the unmined portion of the property was, but he wasn't holding his breath.

They landed in the snow over a fence.

'I vote we call Tony after this - get him over here with the jet. I am not climbing back over that shit,' Clint said.

They'd have to get the jet anyway, if it turned out there was no route out and the two girls their target had taken with him before relocating to the backside of beyond were still alive. Clint didn't want to get caught crossing the minefield when the police turned up.

Their target had snatched the kids en-route, just pulling up and grabbing them like some stranger danger nightmare every parent feared. The police were looking, but it was slow, and if they finally tracked him down to the bunker it would end in a stand-off. Clint could picture it - police busting down the door and finding three bodies, each with a neat, little bullet wound in their skulls.

--

The sound of the door opening gave him warning.

By the time Clint found him he had one of the girls held in front of him, a gun in his hand.

Clint didn't give him a chance to finish shouting a warning.

The bullet hit him square between the eyes and he fell back, dragging the little girl to the floor with him.

She shrieked, scrambling away from the body.

He heard Nat's voice in his ear saying she'd found the other child, unharmed and hiding behind an armchair.

It was over.

The little girl scrabbled back across the floor until she hit the wall. She shut her eyes, put her hands over her ears and moaned.

He wanted to pick her up and hold her, to tell her she was safe now and it was all over. But he'd agreed with Natasha - as little contact as possible, as little chance of their involvement being discovered.

They'd worn masks, and it was no wonder the kid was still terrified. In his tactical gear, with his face covered, he probably looked every bit as much a bogeyman as the guy he'd just killed.

Clint left it to Nat to try and calm them down a little.

She was the only one out of the two of them who knew any Swedish, and he figured they'd react better to a woman - even if they couldn't see her face.

He went outside the bunker and without really thinking slid down the wall onto the snow.

There was relief, the usual kind of thank-fuck-I-can-go-home-now feelings he had after an op. And then there was the disappointment, that he didn't feel more different.

He'd known going in that it wasn't going to fix him like he'd just waved a magic wand. But he'd expected something - some strong feeling or minor epiphany.

His ass had gone numb by the time he stood back up and got his phone out.

It shouldn't have been a surprise that he had signal - maybe lesser phones made by lesser mortals would have struggled, but Starkphones were something else.

That reminded him that he probably owed Stark something. They'd sent him back a crate of wine from France, but it seemed kinda a small offering considering that Clint had probably traumatised his AI. If FRIDAY snapped and went all Space Odyssey on them, he knew it would be his fault.

'Hey, so I kinda need a lift,' he said as soon as Stark picked up. 'And another favour.'

He grumbled a bit when he heard where Clint was, and then went quiet when Clint told him about the kids.

Clint didn't really need to tell him what to do next, letting him hang up so he could make more calls. The sun was close to setting, and Clint heard a distant boom as an unlucky rabbit or deer or other creature was ripped up and scattered over the snow.

He sighed, and it went deeper than usual.

The calm that came afterwards was bliss.

Chapter Text

Laura heard the jet engine and almost tripped over the laundry basket in her hurry to get outside.

'Daddy's back!' Lila squealed, already out on the porch and Cooper was running to where the jet was landing.

Laura scooped up Nate.

'You're not s'posed to just leave your brother!' she shouted after her daughter, aware that Lila was probably already out of earshot.

She headed out onto the porch.

Clint had seemed good whenever he'd called, more like he used to be, but the last call had been almost a month ago. She hadn't even known he was coming home already - there had been no texts, no phone calls.

Cooper was the first to reach his dad.

When Clint emerged she'd looked immediately for injuries, relieved when she couldn't spot any obvious ones.

Then she turned her attention to their son, now standing a few paces away from his dad and hesitating. It hurt to see him like that, and Laura hugged Nate tighter as she jogged to catch up.

She watched as Clint crouched down and put a hand on Cooper's head, ruffling his hair.

He pulled him into a hug a moment later.

Laura was close enough now to be able to see Clint's expression.

All the tension and fear she'd been feeling those past few months relaxed their hold.

Clint gestured to Lila and the little girl ran faster, colliding with her dad and brother and almost sending them sprawling on the grass.

It didn't last as long as the kids probably needed, but they let their father go when he started to pull away.

'Hey, babe,' he said, and Laura could hear the tiredness in his voice.

Normally how this would work, she'd go up and embrace him, give him a kiss - let him know how happy she was to have him back without having to say it. She didn't know if Clint felt comfortable enough for that quite yet, so she hung back.

'You didn't call...?'

She winced at herself. Gee, nice one Laura. Make him feel right at home.

'I was gonna but...'

'...he fell asleep on the jet,' Tony said, getting up from the pilot's chair and Laura hadn't even noticed he was there.

She felt a surge of relief that Clint hadn't flown here himself, wrecked as he looked.

'Thanks for bringing him home,' she said.

'No thanks necessary. I'm looking forward to going home and not almost tripping over agents passed out on my floor or having them drink all my booze.'

Laura looked at Clint for an explanation.

'Tell you later,' he said, smirking. He touched her shoulder gently, moving her away from the jet.

Politeness dictated she should at least try and invite Tony in, but she got the impression that what Clint wanted was to be home alone with his family.

He paused to call over his shoulder.

'I really appreciate everything. You ever need anything, let me know.'

Clint picked up Lila, letting her sit in the crook of his arm. Lila had her arms wrapped his neck like a vine and Laura heard her mumble 'I missed you, Daddy,' into his ear.

--

Clint winced when he hit the couch.

'Just a few bruises,' he said, when he saw her looking.

'That better be all it is,' Laura said. She didn't like being lied to. She was fine not knowing things, as long as they weren't important, but lying to her face was a big no-no. He'd tried it fairly early on in the relationship, tried to keep the less legal, less savoury aspects of his life under wraps. She knew what it was about - he was afraid of getting her involved, of her getting hurt because of him. But more importantly, he was afraid of her finding out the truth and being horrified by it, of being disgusted or even frightened of him. She hadn't been, but she'd been pissed about the lying. And then a few months after marriage when a pulled muscle turned out to be an entire gunshot wound she'd been livid. He hadn't tried to hide another injury from her, and Laura made a point of asking so he couldn't loophole his way out of it by simply not telling her.

'You can check later, promise,' he mumbled, and he was half-way to falling asleep already.

She put Nate down on the floor near some of his toys and asked Cooper to watch him.

She grabbed Clint's arm. It felt wonderful to be able to touch him again without him flinching away.

'Come on. You're going upstairs to bed,' she ordered.

'Yes, ma'am,' he said, groaning as he sat up. Gently she shepherded him up the stairs and into their bedroom.

The instant she got him close enough he collapsed back onto the bed.

Usually in a situation like this Laura would immediately set about taking off his clothes and putting him to bed properly.

This time she hesitated.

'Shoes off. Come on,' she said, sitting on the bed and tapping his leg above the top of his boot. And then, because it was habit, she started to unlace his right boot. She glanced up towards his face and saw that he was smiling.

'I missed this,' he said.

'Missed what?' she asked, freeing his foot from the confines of the boot. She started on the other one.

'You taking care of me,' he admitted, in a small voice like it was something embarrassing.

She smiled, happy because she knew that she was one of only two people he allowed to do things like this. And if he was happy to let her, then that meant he was back.

'Guess it really is only a few bruises,' she said, once she had all the layers of his tactical gear off and on the floor. It felt like it had been years since she had seen his body and she was trying to push back the more primal side of her brain which was telling her to jump him right this instant and screw him until they were both exhausted.

She pushed it back. Locked it away. Buried it.

Because she had to wait until she knew for sure he was alright, more than alright and wanted it as much as her.

Because her stupid, self-sacrificing husband would no doubt see it as fulfilling a conjugal duty to her, would feel bad about his recent distance and would want to make it up to her.

When they next made love, she didn't want it to be because he thought he had to.

'You sound like you don't trust me,' Clint said with a smirk, pulling on the t-shirt he usually slept in.

'Oh, I trust you. I trust that your definition of 'a few bruises' is rather a lot broader than most people,' she said. She leaned forward and touched the side of his face. There were things she wanted to ask, but she could wait until he was no longer sleep-deprived.

'Get some rest,' she said.
--

Cooper had one question for his mom when she first came downstairs.

'Is he better?'

She didn't answer straight away, and that was okay because she was thinking about it. His parents usually had to think about stuff before they answered his questions, and he knew that at least some of the time that meant that there was more that he didn't know. Like when he'd asked his dad how his hearing got messed up - the first time he'd asked, he'd said he got hurt when he was younger. The second time he told him his dad - Cooper's grandpa - had hit him so much it busted something in his ears. The next thing Cooper wanted to know was why, but his dad couldn't, or wouldn't, tell him.

'I think so.'

She was smiling and looked happy, so he knew it was probably the truth. Cooper understood that he probably still needed to be patient with his dad.

It didn't stop him from joining Lila and hugging Dad the instant he came downstairs that evening.

'Guys, are you gonna let me sit down?'

'Nope,' Lila said, muffled from where she had her face pressed against Dad's leg.

Dad sighed at them, but not like he was angry. Cooper glanced up and could see him smiling.

'Okay, then,' he said, and he started to shuffle his way towards the couch with Lila and Cooper still attached.

They let go so that he could sit down and then they collapsed on top of him.

Lila started to chatter on about the toys Dad had sent her - what she'd named them, the stories she'd made up for them and how much she loved them.

Cooper just settled in, resting his head on his dad's ribs and pulling his arm over him like a blanket. He had to curl up small to make it work, and it hit him that he was getting too big to cuddle his dad like this.

He wanted to ask Dad what he'd been doing in Japan, and all the other countries Cooper knew he'd been to. It was probably something to do with a bad guy, maybe whoever had hurt Dad so bad last time, but when Cooper had looked at the news he hadn't seen any mention of an Avengers sighting, no big battles or any kind of superhero antics. He'd used Google translate to check the Japanese news sites - maybe whatever had happened had't been picked up by the American media yet? - but most of them were talking about some business guy who'd been poisoned with ricin and people were panicking. Cooper had gone on to look at a few Chinese and Korean sites, but they were the same. No Avengers-related stories.

It meant that whatever Dad had been doing it was just him and Auntie Nat. Cooper didn't get it. If Dad was going after the same bad guy, why wouldn't he use the team to help? He'd been gone for months. If he'd had Captain America with him, maybe he would have been home sooner.

Cooper dug his fingers into his dad's t-shirt.

'Guys, serious talk for a moment - if I ask you to let go of me, or get off of me then I need you to do it. I'm okay otherwise, but just...if I ask you need to listen,' Dad said, looking at both of them.

'Okay Daddy,' Lila said.

When Cooper opened his mouth he asked 'Why?'

He regretted it instantly.

Dad tensed up and the look on his face made Cooper feel bad and want to take the stupid question back.

That was when Mom walked in with Nate.

'You're already up?'

Dad looked just as relieved as Cooper to be given an out.

'Yeah, sorry honey, think I'm still running on Swedish time.'

So Dad had been in Sweden. Cooper made a note to look up Sweden's news later.

'Then you should be asleep. Aren't they about five hours ahead?'

'Uh...'

Mom shook her head and then looked at Lila.

'It's bathtime Lila. I've run the water already.'

'But Moooom,' Lila whined, holding onto Dad like Mom was gonna try and drag her upstairs right that minute.

'Bath, then pajamas, and then you can come back downstairs and we can all watch a movie. Deal?'

Lila nodded, scrambling to get off the couch and upstairs as fast as she could.

'You too, mister,' Mom said, looking at him.

Cooper glanced back when he was at the foot of the stairs, and he saw Mom passing his baby brother to Dad, saying something low and soothing that he couldn't catch.

When nothing happened, Cooper went on upstairs. Lila almost bowled him over on his way to his room - it looked like she'd just dunked herself in the water and then got out. He considered telling on her, but he was pretty sure she wanted the same thing he wanted - to spend time with Dad - so he didn't.

--

Lila was almost falling asleep by the time the movie finished, but she still tried to beg for another.

'No, it's time for bed, pumpkin. Come on, I'm tired too,' Clint said, picking Lila up.

'Can I have a story?' she mumbled, and Laura knew that question was for Clint, and only for Clint. She didn't take it too personally.

'Of course you can,' Clint said as he carried her on upstairs ahead.

Laura turned her attention to her son, who was quiet as usual.

She put an arm around him.

'You okay?' she asked.

He nodded up at her.

'Is Dad staying this time?' he asked.

'Well, I think so. As long as the Avengers don't need him again.'

Cooper didn't say anything.

When they got to the stairs he scampered on ahead of her and was gone into his room by the time she reached the top.

Something was up, but she trusted he'd come to either her or Clint when he was ready.

--

Laura waited in bed for a while, and when Clint didn't appear she went looking. She didn't have to go far - he was sat in the hallway between Nate and Lila's rooms.

She crouched down in front of him.

'Clint?' she said gently. He didn't respond. She moved to touch him.

'Don't.'

The sharpness of it almost made her jump.

'What's going on?' she said.

Clint breathed out slowly.

'Nothing. Just felt kind of dizzy. I'll be okay in a minute...'

Laura could hear the unspoken request for her to leave, but she stayed put. She waited.

'I'm okay...' he insisted, making no move to get up.

Laura's calves were started to ache but she carried on where she was.

Clint looked at her, smiling at her - and it was a familiar smile this time. The kind she got from time to time and which she interpreted as being a mix of self-deprecation, wonder, admiration and love.

'You're not going back to bed until I move, are you?'

'Correct.'

He laughed.

'Okay, you win,' he said.

When they got to the bedroom though, Clint stopped again. Laura was in under the covers before she noticed, that he hadn't joined her.

She rolled over and he was standing by his side of the bed.

'I need you to do something,' he said.

'Alright,' Laura said, trying to stay calm even though the look on Clint's face was worrying her to death.

'If you see me like that again, I need you to not come near me. Not try to touch me. Just stay away - if I don't come out of it then call Nat, or someone else on the team, but don't try to snap me out of it yourself. I'll warn the kids tomorrow, but please promise me that you won't...'

Laura fought back the sagging feeling. She tried to talk herself out of it - told herself she shouldn't expect him to be back to normal by now just because he always had been before.

'Okay,' she promised.

He was looking at her eyes when she said it, and she saw him relax just a little. He sat down on the bed.

'I don't know why it started happening,' he said. 'Sam called it 'dissociative episodes.' Pretty sure that means I'm crazy or something. That one back there wasn't that bad - think I managed to catch it in time - but I had a few that were really bad...'

She could see the fear there, and Laura could guess at the reasons - loss of control, lashing out, losing her and the kids.

'Natasha wouldn't have let you come home if she thought you were a risk,' Laura said.

'I know. Just...the way I think when I'm like that, I guess it's just fight, flight or freeze. And if you try to shake me out of it and my messed-up brain thinks you're a threat...I don't...I don't want that to happen. So, I need you to promise me that if you see me like that again you'll just leave me where I am.'

'Alright. I can do that,' she said.

Clint let out a breath of relief and flopped back onto the pillow.

'Just glad I'm retired. A sniper who randomly checks out of reality is no fucking use to anyone,' he mumbled, reaching up to take out his hearing aids so he could go to sleep.

'Does it just happen randomly?' Laura said. Because if that was the case then he needed to be seen by someone, a real professional this time.

'No,' Clint said, lowering his hands. 'First time it happened...Steve was pissed about what me and Nat were doing. I got kinda mixed-up, guess in some way I thought Steve was him, but also...I guess maybe my dad too, maybe just every guy who made me feel like...I thought I was gonna get hurt, so I checked out for a bit. Kinda wish I'd been able to do that back when I was a kid - it would've made some of the beatings easier to deal with.'

He'd rolled over so she couldn't see his face, and maybe that was making it easier for him to talk. And it was easier for Laura to process without worrying that her face was sending the wrong message, that he'd think somehow it was him she was horrified by and not them. All the people in Clint's life who had failed him, betrayed and hurt him.

'The big one happened in Paris though. I did something stupid...'

And he proceeded to tell her about Madame Laurent and her basement of horrors, and Laura wished she could have strangled the woman herself. She would have done worse. Much worse. She would have asked Natasha for tips.

'Are you mad?'

'Mmm,' Laura said, not trusting herself to speak at first. 'At her,' she clarified, because she knew her husband. And maybe a small amount of her anger was towards him - because he had weighed the options and decided it was better to put himself in harm's way rather than risk other people and part of her was proud of him for that, but the other part wanted to shake him and tell him how much he mattered to her and their family.

'I killed three people and I don't remember any of it,' he said. 'It's worse not remembering. If something like that happened again and I hurt y--'

'You won't,' Laura said.

'But you don't know that!' Clint protested.

She poked him in the back.

'And you don't know that I'm not gonna go down to the kitchen, get a knife and slit your throat while you're asleep.'

He rolled over and looked at her with a quizzical, almost hurt, look. Like he was wondering how often the thought had crossed her mind - it hadn't, at all, but Laura had needed an example.

'That's not the same--'

'Everyone's capable. Sure, in a fight between me and you the odds are definitely in your favour, but don't act like you're the only one in this family that can hurt and we all need protection from you.'

He didn't say anything at first, looked like he wasn't really sure how to respond to that.

'Y'know kitchen knives make really shitty murder weapons. You're gonna end up with cuts all over your hands, the handle's gonna get slippery - if there's a struggle chances are you won't be able to hold onto the knife, not even mentioning all the evidence you'd leave behind. Better off using a hunting knife, or something that's got a guard on it.'

'I'll remember that next time I'm feeling stabby,' Laura said.

Clint smiled.

'I'll try not to make you too mad then.'

--

It was the same story with Sweden.

Cooper managed to find an English-language news website, but it didn't give him any more answers. The story on the homepage was about two girls who had been found alive after going missing for days. Cooper tried typing 'Avengers' and 'Hawkeye' into the search bar but only came up with old articles - including one debating who the sexiest male Avenger was. Cooper made a face and hit the back arrow.

Then Lila came in.

'Mom wants you to look up the weather.'

'Fine,' Cooper said, closing down some of the tabs.

'What're you doing?' Lila asked, getting up close and trying to see the screen.

'I want to know where Dad went last time.'

'I'll ask him!' Lila said, ignoring his shout and taking off out of the room.

Cooper followed, sprinting down the hall.

He started to catch up once they got outside and he reached out and snatched her jumper.

'Idiot! Don't tell--'

'Hey!'

His dad's voice made him freeze. He looked up, where Dad was on the edge of the roof looking at them.

And then he was down, on the ground, and Cooper wasn't quite sure how he'd managed it so quick. The ladder he'd used to get up there had been ignored.

'Let go of your sister.'

Cooper let go.

Lila ran, coughing, to Dad and hugged his leg.

'Lemme see, sweetheart.'

Cooper hadn't realised that when he'd grabbed her jumper the neck had dug into her throat. Cooper saw the red line when she tilted her head back so Dad could look.

'Didn't break the skin. Can you swallow? Feel dizzy?'

Lila nodded and shook her head.

'I didn't mean to--'

'Wait,' Dad said, looking at him. Cooper knew he was in trouble now but he wasn't sure how much. Dad looked back at Lila.

'You okay? Go on inside now, I need to talk to your brother.'

The dread built each second until she was inside and Cooper didn't dare look up because he knew Dad would be looking straight at him.

'So what was that about?'

Cooper bit his lip.

'Nothing,' he said.

'Don't lie.'

'But you do!'

Cooper looked up when he said, and caught the moment of hurt on his Dad's face before it disappeared and his expression hardened.

'Cooper, there's a difference between lying and not telling the truth.'

His voice was gentler than Cooper had expected. He just wished he could understand what his dad was trying to say.

'Okay, look. If I ask you about your day and you don't tell me every little detail, is that lying? But if you told me that you'd been to space, when you hadn't really, that would be a lie. I don't lie to you guys, I just don't tell you everything. Understand?'

Cooper nodded.

'So, I'm gonna ask again. What was all that about?'

Cooper started to mumble.

'Gonna have to be louder than that, Coop.'

'Just wanted to know where you went...' Cooper said, realising that he was on the edge of tears.

His dad crouched down and put a hand on his shoulder and Cooper tried to hide his face but of course Dad spotted the tears starting to form.

'Hey. It's okay,' he said. 'It's a pretty long list actually. I can show you on a map if you want?'

ooper shook his head.

'Why?' he said, unable to get the question out as anything more than just that.

'Coop, it was work stuff.'

And work stuff meant he couldn't tell, or at least it did when dad had worked for SHIELD, but Cooper was always seeing stuff on the news when his dad went out with the Avengers. He'd been able to see the things his dad was doing.

'Then why was it just you and Auntie Nat?'

Dad sighed.

'Because we've got different skillsets to the others. Captain America and Iron Man don't do stealth. You work all this out yourself or did Mom--?'

'Myself. I looked on the news a lot and there weren't any Avengers sightings in the places you'd been so...' He shrugged.

Dad was looking at him in a kind of weird way - like he wasn't sure whether to be mad or not.

'I'm not gonna get anything past you, am I?' Dad said, sighing and rubbing his face. 'Alright, Columbo, you've got your answer now, but we still need to talk about your sister. I think you owe her an apology and no computer time for two days. Sound fair?'

Cooper nodded.

'Alright. Now go say sorry.'

Cooper turned and ran back into the house.

He kept thinking about what his dad had said about skillsets. It kept turning over in his mind, about just what his dad's skills were. He recalled the thunk of his dad's arrows hitting one of their homemade targets. Scenes from movies flashed into his mind. Arrows sticking out of invaders bodies. He thought of his dad's face while he was aiming. Aiming at something. Someone.

He managed to make his apology and then went straight up to his room.

--

'So I got the lightning rod re-attached. We should be fine if those thunderstorms hit us,' Clint said when he came indoors. 'Did Coop apologise to Lila?'

'He did. Very sincere. Why were they fighting? Lila didn't seem to know,' Laura said. She was sat in the living room with Nate on her lap, bouncing him lightly on her knee.

'Our son was playing detective. Trying to figure out what I've been up to these last few months. Apparently Lila was gonna spill the beans and he tried to stop her.'

Clint sat down, the conversation he'd had with Cooper playing over in his head. He tried to tell himself the fear he was feeling was unnecessary - he shouldn't be scared of his own kid. And he was kinda proud that his kid was curious and bright but he'd picked the wrong moment to show it and Clint really wished he'd picked another subject too.

'Feel like we should be buying him crosswords or something to keep him occupied,' Clint said.

'Are you okay?' Laura asked.

Clint nodded - he was, or at least he thought he was.

'Want me to take over with Nate and you can get started on dinner?' he asked.

Laura handed over the baby, and Clint practised grounding himself, trying to side-step the intrusive thoughts.

Nate looked up at him and broke out one of his infectious, pure and joyful smiles.

'Wow, look at all those teeth. You're going to be walking and talking before we know it, aren't you?'

He'd never been there to fully watch the progression from newborn to toddler to child, to see it happen day by day - he'd had to rely on the photos and snippets of video Laura had sent him. Clint had missed both Cooper and Lila's first words and Laura had spent weeks trying to get Lila on tape saying 'dada' so she could show it to him. Apparently every time Laura would put the camera down, Lila would say say it, giggling and clapping her hands like it was a game.

'I've got a few years at least before you start asking the awkward questions, huh?'

Nate gurgled.

--

'Dad, do you kill people?'

The question was asked in the kitchen that evening - with Lila, Laura and Nate upstairs getting ready for bed.

Clint dried his hands and turned around to face Cooper.

Shit.

He'd really boxed himself in with that talk about lying earlier.

'Yeah.'

Cooper looked like he hadn't expected a straight answer, but Clint had decided that old enough to ask was old enough to know, and Cooper had clearly given this some thought.

'You got anything else to ask?'

'Were they bad people?'

And that was the really important part of it for Cooper - his daddy may be a killer, but he only killed bad people.

Clint nodded.

He didn't need to burden his kid with his guilt. All that mattered was what Clint had thought when he had let the arrow fly, when he had pulled the trigger - not what he sometimes found out afterwards. Cooper didn't need to know about Las Vegas, and how a mistake somewhere up the chain had led to him blasting the brains out of the wrong guy. A guy with a girlfriend and a mother who loved him, and a job which had had nothing whatever to do with leaked top-secret weapons blueprints, which was the reason SHIELD were even there. And that was just the worst one - Clint could think of numerous times when, going back over mission logs and files, he'd doubted the necessity of a hit. It had taken years before his handlers had decided to listen to his opinions, to see him as more than an uneducated ex-carnie with spookily good aim, and had trusted him with more than just the wet work.

'Is that what you did in Sweden, and all the other places...?'

'Yeah, it is.'

'Did you kill the guy who hurt you last time, too?'

'Yup.'

'But didn't Captain America save you?'

'Steve opened a door for me. That was it.'

And if it hadn't have been for that stupid door - if Clint had thought to keep that slimy, smug piece of shit alive until he was out the front door, then he wouldn't have needed Cap at all. Wouldn't have needed the others to swoop in and see, and know what had been done to him.

Clint gripped the counter behind him, focused on the feel of the wood on his palms.

'Coop, I don't really want to talk about this. Is that okay?'

Cooper nodded. He still looked like he wanted to ask more, like maybe he felt bad for asking or what Clint had told him had been too much.

Maybe he'd hate him now.

'I'm sorry, Dad,' Cooper said, and in the next instant he was plastered to Clint's front.

'What're you sorry for?' Clint asked, rubbing his son's back.

'E-everything,' Cooper mumbled, and yup, that was snot and tears starting to soak through his shirt.

'Well that's a whole lot for a little kid to be apologising for.'

Cooper mumbled something into Clint's midriff, possibly an objection to being called 'little'.

'As long as I can pick you up and hold you over my head, then you'll be little to me.'

An eye peered up at him from between tufts of dark brown hair.

'You can't do that,' Cooper said, muffled by Clint's shirt sticking to his face.

'Wanna bet?'

--

They went outside, where they wouldn't end up accidentally destroying the kitchen.

It was pitch black.

When he'd been little - and he wasn't accepting Dad calling him a little kid, not until he'd proved it - Cooper had been scared of the dark. He'd had a nightlight, and his parents had always left his door open a bit so he could see the hall light. But as he'd got older he'd come to realise that there weren't monsters hiding in the dark corners of his bedroom - he'd learned the word for it 'nyctophobia', and after that it'd been less scary when he was in his room at night.

'Now don't squirm around and try to cheat. We're doing this fair.'

Cooper nodded and held still when his dad gripped him around the middle and lifted him into the air.

'And point proved,' Dad said, when there was nothing between Cooper and night sky. He put him back down on the ground and pointed at him. 'Little kid. And little kids don't need to apologise for the world and everything in it. Leave that to the grown-ups.'

Cooper just nodded.

He didn't know how to explain that he was sorry his dad had to hurt the way he did - because Cooper had seen the hurt when he'd asked him all those questions, and as much as he wanted to know why, he also wished he could make it stop.

--

Clint liked thunder.

For one thing, he didn't have to listen to it if he didn't want to.

When he'd been a kid he'd stay up listening to the thunder and watching for the lightning with his brother. They'd count the seconds between the boom and the flash, and watch as the storm got closer or further away. When Clint had gone deaf, Barney would sign each time for the thunder, so they could still count together.

Laura, on the other hand, hated thunder.

She was always on edge during thunderstorms, and Clint would do his best to soothe her. He'd held his hands over her ears once, during a particularly violent one, trying to block the sounds from getting to her.

He'd watched the progress of this storm, as the clouds formed in the early evening and the wind picked up, but the thunder didn't start until the family had gone to bed.

He didn't hear the first clash, but he felt Laura jolt awake. She trembled, and he flung his arm out over her, wrapping her up and pressing his face into her neck.

The next clap of thunder didn't come until Clint had almost dropped off to sleep again. He thought maybe the storm had missed them, but no such luck.

Lila came creeping in soon enough, Clint spotted her out of the corner of his eye and sat up and finally put his hearing aids in.

'Did the thunder wake you up, pumpkin?' he asked.

Lila nodded. She had her stuffed rabbit with her and a blanket.

'You want to come sleep in Daddy and Mommy's bed?'

She nodded again and leapt onto the bed like a cat.

'Mommy, are you scared?' Lila asked, burrowing in between Clint and Laura like she was making room on a packed train. Clint got elbowed twice.

'Don't be scared. I'm here, and Mr Raisins too.' She held up her stuffed toy for Laura to see.

There was a crash of thunder, louder than any so far.

Laura shuddered.

'I'm not scared, sweetheart.'

Lila huffed like she didn't believe her, and Clint was almost bowled over by the love he felt for his daughter, so small and yet so caring.

The storm was getting closer, so more thunder, and Clint lay awake listening to it. In his head he counted the seconds between the booms and the flashes which lit up the room.

As the storm was almost overhead, Nate woke up.

Laura sat up.

'Honey, I'll go. You stay with Lila,' Clint said.

He padded into Nate's room, and leaned over the crib. There was a brief moment of deja-vu, remembering doing this same thing and his skin almost itching with the feeling of how filthy and tainted he was, of running away from it all.

'What's the matter? Did the storm wake you up, little guy?'

He lifted his sobbing son up out of the blankets and cradled him against his chest.

The wailing changed, quicker than he was expecting - it always seemed to take longer for him to get Nate to stop crying. It was no longer the screeching alarm bell it had been, but a grumbling discontent.

Clint patted his back.

'You hungry? You sound like you're hungry. Let's get you something to eat.'

He carried Nate downstairs to the fridge where Laura usually kept a couple of bottles of breast milk.

'Looks like I was right, huh?' Clint said, lifting Nate up onto his shoulder after he'd finished. Tiny hands grasped at his t-shirt and Clint looked at one, with it's chubby wrist and tiny, perfect fingers with their tiny, perfect fingernails.

Clint could remember the first time he'd held Cooper, he'd been terrified, possibly more terrified than he'd ever been in a his life. He'd been so small, so fragile and Clint just thought: What the fuck have I done? He was petrified he was going to fuck it up - and there were so many ways to do it. What if he dropped the kid? What if he held him wrong and it did something to his stupidly tiny, fragile insides? The responsibility had hit him like a ton of bricks. He had no one to really talk to about it, because no one was s'posed to know and those that did know couldn't exactly help - he definitely wasn't going to take parenting advice from Fury.

So he'd turned to books.

Clint wasn't a great fan of books. He'd been behind in school, what with all the days off he'd had to take because of the bruises and then being deafened - by the time he'd gone to the orphanage he'd barely been able to sound out the shorter words, and no one there had really seemed to care or even notice.

One of the carnies, a young woman named Miriam, had tried to teach him to read and write, but their sessions were infrequent and usually rushed. He got to the point, however, where he could read simple passages without having to labour over every word, and that had seemed good enough to him. Miriam had left to marry a man she'd met in one of the towns they'd passed through, and that was the end of the informal lessons anyway.

Then came SHIELD and he hadn't been able to hide his poor reading comprehension and near inability to write from the bullshit tests they'd shoved on him. He'd had lessons, with a proper teacher, but he'd felt judged and had hated every minute of it. His reading had reached the required level, enough for him to read and understand mission documents, and his writing was legible enough to fill out paperwork even if being able to read it seemed to be a talent most people lacked, but Clint had never considered reading fun.

He ended up reading almost half a dozen parenting books. It was around this time that he also realised just how utterly shit his own upbringing had been. Most of the advice printed on the pages was completely alien to him - he'd never heard of positive reinforcement, of telling your child how much you loved them. Of course he knew that beating your child black and blue was wrong, but he hadn't realised how many of the little things his parents had got wrong too. Any praise he'd received had always been from his mom, and it had always been about his dad, about not pissing him off; a small smile when he'd stayed out of the way during one of his dad's rages, a brief touch as he played quietly in his room. He'd never been told he was good, could never remember his dad saying anything about him that wasn't an insult, a complaint about what a burdensome, useless brat he was.

Clint was determined to do better - and really the bar was already pretty low. Even though he knew the newborn wouldn't be able to understand him, he talked to him whenever he held him. He did his share of the diaper changing and the night feeds. He made the effort his dad never had.

It had been hard, being called out for a mission when Cooper was only a few months old. Clint had missed him - maybe he hadn't exactly missed being woken up at all hours by the shrill, demanding wail, but there had been an ache he'd never had before.

He didn't think it was possible to love something so much - and it scared him shitless.

'Come on, time to get you back to bed, little guy.'

The storm was still going on, but Clint hoped that with a full belly Nate would be sleepy enough not to wake again.

He went back upstairs, and found Cooper standing in the hallway rubbing his eyes.

'Storm got you up too?' Clint asked. Cooper had never seemed especially nervous around storms, so it was a surprise.

'Is Lila okay?' Cooper asked, and Clint saw that her door was wide open.

'Yeah, she's keeping your mom company. We've got room for one more, if you want?'

Cooper shook his head.

'Alright then,' Clint said.

--

Nate was being fussy.

Clint would get him settled and quiet and then he'd go to put him down in his crib and he'd start crying again.

Finally Clint sat down in the rocking chair by the window with Nate cradled against his chest. The baby squirmed against him, making himself comfortable and yawning.

'Uh-uh, you're not supposed to sleep on me. You're supposed to sleep in your bed.'

Clint looked down at the scrunched up face with it's god-damn adorable, perfect, little nose, pressed up against the fabric of his t-shirt, right over his heart.

There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but Clint was too tired to follow it.

He leaned back in the chair.

'You pee on me again, mister, and there's gonna be trouble.'

It had only happened once so far, which was a definite improvement on Cooper's record - Clint had learned quickly enough to approach diaper changing like he would any SHIELD operation. You got in, did what you had to do, didn't get distracted and you were out before the piss hit the fan.

'Made yourself comfy, haven't you?'

He rocked the chair back and forth with one foot, murmuring away to Nate. Soon enough he had a sleeping baby lying on his chest.

The little voice was there - like it always was - telling him that he didn't deserve all this. The wife, the kids, the pleasant chaos of family life. It was meant for other people. Better people.

The voice was smaller now though. Like a cancer which had been shrunk by rays of radiation. It wasn't gone - he knew it would never be completely gone - but it was no longer in control.

He didn't have to listen to what it said.

'Time to move ya, little Nat.'

It was like handling a ticking bomb.

Clint could have sworn he was sweating by the time he had Nate placed in his crib and was out the door.

Lila was starfished out over his side of the bed when he got back to the bedroom. He was able to encourage her back into the middle without waking her up completely. By now the thunder was tapering off.

He looked at Laura, still awake and waiting for the storm to end, and smiled at her. She wrestled an arm above the covers and made a sign.

I love you

Clint thought about it for less than a second.

He knew he might freak out.

Knew he might check out again.

And maybe it was selfish to go ahead and do it anyway.

He leaned over and kissed Laura.

Roth had never tried to kiss his mouth, had probably known that Clint would bite and was waiting until he was more docile. So maybe that was why he could do it.

Or maybe it was just as he'd hoped, and he was healing at last.

When he pulled away Laura was looking at him in surprise, then she started smiling.

'Glad to have you back,' she whispered, over the sound of the rain.

'Sorry it took so long,' he replied.

Chapter Text

There were a lot of people in the house.

Lila knew they were all friends of Daddy's, which kinda made them her friends too. Daddy only let people he really trusted come to the house.

She hid behind Mommy anyway when she opened the door.

Then she'd seen Auntie Nat and Wanda and had run to give them each a hug.

'Gotta let them get in through the door first, sweetie,' Daddy said.

There were new people too - ones she hadn't met before.

There was a pale, blond man with Wanda. He looked at her, but didn't smile, so Lila hid behind Mommy again.

And there was another man with dark skin like Mr Fury, but he didn't have an eyepatch and wasn't scary-looking like him.

Daddy picked her up.

'Lila, this is Falcon, but you can call him Sam.'

She said hello, and Sam shook hands with her like she was a grown-up and said it was nice to meet her.

Then Daddy put her back down and she ran to Auntie Nat.

She remembered she had to say thank you for the toys Daddy had got her, because Daddy had said Auntie Nat helped him pick.

'You're very welcome.'

'Lila, I want to introduce to my friend.'

It was Wanda, and she had the strange man with her.

Wanda crouched down, and the strange man copied her.

'His name is Vision. Vision, this is Clint's daughter Lila.'

'I understand. Hello, Lila Barton.'

'Your voice is funny...' she said. It wasn't funny like Wanda's, but a different kind of funny.

'I did not realise...'

'She means your accent, Vis.'

'Yes. My voice is actually based on that of Edwin Jarvis, Mr Stark's butler.'

Lila's eyes widened.

'Mr Stark has a butler?!'

Auntie Nat laughed.

Lila looked around for Mr Stark - she knew he was rich, because she'd heard Daddy talk about it, but she didn't know he had a butler. She'd only seen butlers in movies and cartoons - she didn't know that people really had them.

Wanda took Vision off to meet her baby brother, and Lila was left with Auntie Nat.

She wanted to know how things had been, so Lila told her about the thunder storm and how she'd slept in Mommy and Daddy's bed to make sure Mommy didn't get too scared, she told about how Mommy was helping her learn Spanish, how Daddy had put up a swing for her and Cooper in the woods near their treehouse.

'Sounds like your daddy's getting lots better,' Auntie Nat said.

'He is,' Lila said, smiling. 'Last night we had macaroni and cheese for dinner! Daddy couldn't eat it before because of what the bad man did, but we had it last night and he wasn't sick at all.'

Auntie Nat looked impressed.

--

It was too loud.

Everywhere she went she would bump into a leg. There'd be someone looming over her.

Eventually Lila took a bowl of chips and went under the coffee table. She watched people's feet move while she stuffed her cheeks with doritos.

'What are you doing?' Cooper asked, kneeling down and peering at her.

She did some of Daddy's signs, telling him it was too loud.

Cooper rolled his eyes at her.

'Why don't you go outside, doofus? Dad's out there with Steve.'

He held a hand out to her, and Lila left the chips and crawled out. She almost got stepped on by Mr Stark.

'Woah, sorry, where'd you come from? Picking up your dad's habits. There a vent around here or something?'

Lila didn't know what he was talking about, and her brother pulled her onwards. He let go of her by the kitchen door, and went back to join the party.

Lila stepped out onto the porch.

It was twilight. The sky was all pink, with clouds like candyfloss.

She spotted Daddy, sitting on the edge of the porch with Steve.

She ran over and sat in his lap.

'Oof. You alright, pumpkin?'

'Too loud,' she said, putting her face against his shirt.

'Aw, I'm sorry. It's a lot of people to have around at once. What d'you think of Sam and Vision?'

She nodded her head, and then she swivelled around, settling herself with her back against his chest and her legs dangling over the edge of the porch on top of his. He wrapped his arms around her middle and rested his chin on her head.

'Daddy, is Sam your replacement?'

'I hope not. He's a decent marksman, I'll give him that, but I ain't seen him do it with a bow. The only person replacing Hawkeye is another Hawkeye.'

'Okay.'

She didn't like the thought of her daddy being replaced, because he was hers and the only one she had.

'So about what you were saying...'

Lila looked up and realised Daddy was talking to Steve.

'...it's fine, and it's in the past. Yeah it sucked, and you didn't really help it suck less, but I get it. And I'm okay now, anyway.'

He hugged her tighter.

'Daddy, are you mad at Steve?'

'I was, pumpkin, but not now.'

'What're you mad about?'

'Just stupid stuff. It doesn't matter. Did you know that Vision is a robot?'

Lila looked at him, trying to see if he was joking.

'No. He is. Cap, back me up here. Vision is a robot, right?'

'I don't know if robot is really the right term...'

'The guy's made of metal. He's a robot.'

'He's made of metal?' Lila said. He'd looked just like a normal person, but he hadn't shook her hand or anything, so maybe it was true.

'Pretty sure he's made out of the same stuff as Cap's shield.'

Lila looked at Steve for confirmation.

He nodded.

'But he looks like a person!'

'Not all the time. Only when he wants to.'

Lila's jaw dropped.

--

Clint watched his daughter run off back into the house, no doubt to ambush Vision with all sorts of questions.

He looked back at Steve and rolled his eyes at him.

'I still owe Vis some payback, remember? 'Sides, Wanda'll be able to distract Lila if it bothers him.'

It had been good to see Clint interacting with his kids again, and Steve could tell he was happier. He hadn't dared to ask too much - to try and find out if the flashbacks and the dissociative episodes had gotten better, but it seemed like it.

They weren't sitting exactly side by side, but they were close enough, and Clint had seemed alright - no tenseness, no nervousness.

Still, it wasn't what it had been.

'You want to know what was going through my head just before you busted down that door?' Clint asked.

Steve didn't, not really. And Clint probably knew that, but he carried on talking anyway.

'Figured I was probably gonna die. I'd checked pretty much every door and there were no other exits, and the only food I could get at were some lemons and limes in the fucking full-size bar the bastard had. So, I was gonna starve but at least my chances of getting scurvy first were pretty low.

'There was kind of a three way tie going on. I could sit there and starve, or I could down the contents of the bar and hope alcohol poisoning was a better way to go. Option number three was what I was psyching myself up for. I don't know if I'd have been able to do it, but it never hurts to keep your options open.'

Steve wasn't entirely sure what Clint was talking about, and it must have shown on his face.

'You ever heard of the plane crash in the Andes? Back in the early seventies. The survivors were stuck up on a glacier with nothing to eat but the bodies of their friends and families. Course with all that snow and ice around they could afford to wait and think it over a bit, I didn't have that option.'

Clint looked at him and smirked. If Steve had only just met him, he might assume he was joking.

'I'm grateful. I could have done with you guys getting there a bit sooner, but at least you turned up before I'd resorted to cannibalism.'

'Is that supposed to make me feel better?' Steve asked.

Clint shrugged.

'It can if you want it to,' he said. 'We all have our coping methods. I know you don't exactly approve of mine...'

'It worked though,' Steve said. 'And maybe that's what matters.'

Clint nodded.

'Have you seen the gift basket Laura made for Stark? She doesn't even make jam - she learned just for him. Six different kinds! And she wove the basket herself.'

'I'll make sure he remembers it.'

'You might want to warn him about where he opens the card, too. The thing is packed full of glitter.

'She's got one for you and Wanda as well. There's no glitter in your cards, because she doesn't hate you, but I'm pretty sure she's made you both sweaters. You have no idea of the amount of wool she's gone through these past few weeks...'

'Why...?' Steve asked. Not that the idea of receiving a handmade sweater wasn't adorable and heartwarming, but he wasn't sure what he'd done to deserve it.

'For helping out while I was being an idiot. I really appreciate it.'

'You weren't...'

Clint stood up, because apparently the conversation was over, and Steve wasn't going to argue. He tried not to look too surprised when Clint offered a hand to help him up.

'You don't have to actually wear the sweater - I think it's more of a thought-that-counts kinda scenario,' Clint said.

Steve looked in through the kitchen door and saw Vision, in all his red, metallic glory being pawed at by the two eldest Barton children.

It was hard to tell if he looked out of his depth or not, but Steve thought he could detect a slightly harried look as his head went back and forth trying to keep up with Cooper and Lila's questions.

Steve didn't see Wanda at first, and that was because she was at the other end of the room next to Laura on the couch. Vision was on his own.

'Guess I better go rescue him,' Clint said, sighing. 'We're good, now, right?'

'I think we are.'

Clint gave him a small salute and went to pry his kids away from Vision.

-

'Oh my god, they look like such dorks. Honey, look!'

Laura shoved her phone in his face. She was beaming.

Clint looked at the picture and almost choked.

It was Steve, Wanda and Tony, grouped together and all wearing their handmade sweaters. Steve looked self-conscious, like he usually did on camera. Stark's hair was messed up, like the sweater had just been pulled over his head, and the look on his face said he was being strongly encouraged to be in the picture. Wanda was in the front, looking like the kid she was, and holding onto Steve and Tony behind her.

Considering she'd only estimated the measurements, Laura had done alright - although she had misjudged Steve's slightly. Somehow she'd made it too big, and it hung off him like a sack.

'Can you send this to me? I need it for my blackmail files,' Clint said. He noticed the text under the picture, and who it was from. Steve had ignored what Clint had said about not having to wear the sweater, it seemed.

Laura nodded, taking her phone back.

'That's so sweet of him,' Laura said. 'God, they look pretty terrible, don't they?'

Clint didn't even try to lie.

Laura laughed and leaned against him.

She didn't think about it, didn't ask, she just did it - like she used to before.

And Clint didn't tense up, didn't think about pushing her away.

He was home.

He wasn't okay, far from it, but he was stubborn.

The people who'd hurt him were dead, all that was left were the ghosts stuck in his head. He could feel them getting weaker, day by day.

He'd survived. He'd won.