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The first time Natasha Romanov met Clint Barton, she wasn’t Natasha. She was a bloody mess.
Angry; inconsolable; angry.
And he was just Clint. Patient, reckless, and just there. Right when she needed him.
They worked together so well, everyone could see. They were close, fast friends. For a long time, the only person she spoke to was Clint. Mission after mission, they were unstoppable.
And then Budapest.
They’d had a thing in Budapest.
Natasha couldn’t tell you how it happened, why it happened. But she just woke up one morning, in his arms, and she’d never felt safer in her life. She was an assassin, she could protect herself. But Clint was such a comforting presence in her life. Budapest had been something extraordinary. But back on American Soil, she’d been the first to admit that “this can’t be a thing here”. He’d looked like a kicked puppy, but had nodded in understanding. They wouldn’t work back here. Away, in Budapest, on missions, they were free. Free to do what they wanted, when, and with who. But back at SHIELD, they were assassins, soldiers, agents, and they had responsibilities, and schedules. She could be in Russia for four months, only to come back and find out he’d been shipped to Australia for the rest of the year, and when he came back they’d get a week together before both were sent to missions on opposite ends of the country. Budapest was a luxury.
Of course, Fury did send them on missions together. Hawkeye and Black Widow were an unstoppable duo. And on the missions they went on together, sometimes Natasha would find herself in Clint’s room late at night, and they would see the morning together.
But then Clint met Laura.
Laura was lovely, so kind and sweet, and just the right amount of snarky to be able to put up with him. She’d asked him on a date and he’d said yes before really thinking about what it meant, and he’d come to Natasha, awkward and uncomfortable, not wanting to go. And Natasha, now that she thought about it, should have told him then. She should have told Clint she loved him, and that she didn’t want him to go on the date either. But she hadn’t. “Go,” she’d said. “It might be fun to socialise with someone who’s not covered in blood and sweat all the time.”
And so he’d gone.
Give it a year they’re engaged.
Give it another six months they’re married.
And Natasha had smiled the whole way through, smiled as she’d met Laura, as she’d gone to dinner after dinner with the woman and Clint, because “Nat’s my best friend” and “Nat, you have to approve of her before anything else”, and how could Natasha not approve of Laura - she was perfect; exactly what Clint deserved. "You alright with this?" he'd asked once, a few weeks before he proposed. She'd smiled and rolled her eyes. "I'm fine," Natasha had replied.
But she wasn’t fine with it.
And he knew it too.
It was unspoken between them. But that was how Clint and Natasha worked; things just went unsaid. Usually for the best. But times like this, for the worst.
Natasha was at the wedding, of course she was. He'd asked her to be there, and she could never say no to him. He was the first friend she'd ever had, her best friend. Her family. And yet it had been another day in her life that she'd wondered why she'd never told him how she felt. Because now it was too late. And so she smiled, and clapped, and drank to their toast, sat with Phil and Maria, and was thankful for her training in her ability to fake a smile. No one could tell Natasha was anything but delighted for her best friend Clint and his new wife.
Except Clint himself.
He’d look at her throughout the day, a sad look on his face that made Natasha want to leave the wedding, because no man should look sad on their wedding day.
After the wedding, Natasha saw Clint less.
Laura got pregnant, and Natasha gave him the space he needed to focus on his family. Natasha became a sort of cupid for the department, because other peoples relationships were so much easier than hers. She set up Maria, first, with a few different women, and was delighted when one worked out. Jack from Weapons Spec was next, and he was married within a year thanks to a date organised by Natasha. Then she set up Tom in Armour up with Kate up on the third floor, and after that it just became a habit. People deserved to be in love, and Natasha would damn well make sure everyone got that chance. Because she’d blown hers.
Natasha started the thing with Bruce because he was kind, and nice, and sweet, and he didn't make her feel like shit. He made her feel sort of like how Clint made her feel, like she’s a real person, like she deserves to be happy. She thinks maybe Bruce can be what she always wanted… She thinks he has to be. Because Laura’s just had their third kid and Natasha’s window of opportunity was ten years ago and she blew it.
She tries with Bruce.
She really tries. She’s the only one who can calm him down, and he makes her feel worthy of something.
But she doesn’t love him. And she doesn’t think he loves her either. And so it fizzles out. Because he’s nice and kind and sweet, but he’s not what she wants. He’s not Clint. Natasha often wondered if Bruce knew. If Bruce knew all along that she didn’t love him; couldn't love him. It makes her smile, sometimes, at just how much of a good man Bruce really is, to take her on despite knowing she’s got all this unspoken baggage for Clint, and caring for her all the same. One day he’ll make someone very happy. But it’s not her.
And so Natasha goes back to having painfully lovely Sunday dinners with the Bartons, her thing with Bruce over and Laura, being the good friend she is, offering Natasha somewhere to come and get over the break up. Natasha wishes it were that simple. She loves the Bartons. She adores them. Their family is such a beautiful thing, and she feels so honoured to be a part of it, feels so honoured to have Lila call her “Auntie Nat”, that their son is named Nathaniel after her, that the guest room is filled with more of her stuff than any guest room really should. And yet theres so much pain in her chest, every time she steps inside that house.
Because it’s Clint’s family.
And it hurts. She loves him, and she smiles when she sees him playing wit his kids, so happy, and washing the dishes with his wife, happy, and being the gentlemanly loving, doting father and husband that she knows he can be. She can’t help but smile when she watches him, she on the porch, he down by the trees, as he hoists little Nathaniel into his arms and kisses Laura, the image of such a perfect family. But though Natasha smiles, she can feel the tears in her eyes. She loves the Bartons. And she feels such immense guilt for even thinking, for a second, ‘what if he’d been with me’.
When the Snap happened and Clint lost his family, he left. He didn’t say a word to anyone, packed his bags and left. She went after him, near begged him to come back and help them fight, but he’d thrown his bow at her and told her he’d rather kill every single soul left on this planet. He was hurting. She was hurting, watching him go. She isn’t enough for him.
Five years later, when Rhodey finally gets a track on him, knows his next location, Natasha knows she has to go. Maybe Steve was right; they needed to move on. But Steve hadn’t moved on. Natasha new Steve still thought about Peggy, would go back to her if he could. Natasha wondered if he’d waste his 'Time Heist Jump' on going back to be with her. Natasha wouldn’t be surprised. Even though he had Bucky in the present day, his love for Peggy was blinding. Natasha knew what that felt like. She could’t move on. Not from Clint.
When she finds him she’s overwhelmed by how broken he looks. He’s so far from Hawkeye, so far from Mr Barton, but he’s still Clint. She can still see him, her Clint. It’s a role reversal. The first time they met, he was SHIELD, and she was an assassin covered in blood and tainted with murder. It feels like dejavu. Except this time she’s the Agent, and he’s the blood-covered killer, and she’s asking him to come with her, to come back. She’d done it for him.
And so he does it for her.
She knows this war with Thanos will not end well. People will die. And so she makes the most of her time with Clint. It feels like them again, Clint and Nat, except he’s burdened by such murder and she’s been running the war effort on her own for five long years and she’s exhausted. But they have each other and it feels good.
But she feels so bad for thinking like that. His family, his wife and kids, are dead, and she’s acting like it’s the time of her life. She feels like a monster.
When he brings up Budapest on their way to get the Soul Stone, she laughs.
She hasn’t laughed in years. More than the five after the snap. She hadn’t laughed long before that.
But the sound of his laugh is infections. And she grins, and she laughs, and she feels like herself. They’re joking again, he’s teasing her, and she feels like theyre Nat and Clint again.
He feels it too.
Because he laughs so much his eyes water, and they crinkle in the way she’s always teased him about. She’s missed him so much.
But then it all comes crashing back to reality.
She’s dangling over a ledge, hand in Clint’s, and she knows that it’s her that’s going to die. It has to be.
She won’t let him die. He has a family. Her family is him, and if he survives, she will be happy. Her family are the avengers, and she knows that if they get this stone, they will win. She will have won.
She looks up at Clint, and tries to show him all of this in her eyes.
And he looks at her with such pain, that he has to know.
He has to know how she feels. She can see him about to say something, about to speak, but she tells him to let her go.
And then she’s falling from his grasp. Because no mater how much she loves him, he has a family, and no matter how much she wants to be that family, he has a wife and kids, and she loves him more than she’s ever loved herself; and so she dies, so he can live. She dies, so he can take the stone to her family, her Avengers, and save the world.
///
Clint hadn’t wanted to go to her funeral.
Not that there was a funeral, more of a commemoration. She’d not wanted one. Wanted to be burnt, and her ashes scattered. Tony had wanted the funeral. Not Natasha.
She’d have preferred it just be he and Steve if she’d had her choice. But Fury hadn’t listened, and so there’d been a small ceremony, just those few high ranking avengers and agents who knew Natasha personally. Clint had stood beside Steve, and neither had said a word.
After it ended, Steve had left, but Clint had been stuck to the ground. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. Fury had asked Clint to do it, to scatter her ashes, but it was all too soon, too raw, and he’d passed the urn to Maria Hill, who took the mantle with tears in her eyes and a promise to do Natasha well.
Clint didn’t go back to the new Avengers HQ, nor did he go to greet the new avengers team, led by Carol. He sent his congratulations, how proud he was, but he didn’t go. He lay in bed for weeks and did nothing, to the extent that his daughter had started asking him if he was ill. He felt ill. It was too much to bare. He’d seen the look in Natasha’s eyes as she fell. In another life, in another of these strange alternate timelines, he and Natasha were together, Clint just knew it. But not this one. In this one they were not meant to be, regardless of love.
He had loved her from the moment he met her, blood-stained and all. He still did. And he could only hope that she’d known. When Wanda had said that ‘she knows’, Clint had thought she meant that Natasha had known they’d won, and at ‘they both do’, he assumed she meant Tony. But laying in bed one night, six months after the funeral, Clint couldn’t help but wonder if her intention was something different. They both do. Wanda's Vision, and Clint's Natasha knew they were loved.