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Well, all of Clint's suppositions about how the Avengers would end up time traveling had been dead wrong. He had never imagined going off-planet and all things considered, he would have preferred a T. Rex vs. Thor over the reprise of the featured creatures from the Battle of New York.
And now, as he landed the QuinJet in the meadow of what had once been home, Clint's first thought was: Never again would he make fun of Laura's inexplicable belief that mayonnaise was an appropriate condiment for any meat-adjacent product.
He saw his wife and children for the first time in over five years and his first thought was about hot dogs. Of course it was. There would be time to parse the unreal few weeks he'd had -- time travel and multiple blue robot women and fucking six-legged murder dogs and the Thor Lebowski and the Jolly Nerd Giant that Bruce had apparently turned into and goofy Ant-Man somehow kick-starting this whole thing. There would time to let the enormity of Nat's death wash over him. He'd work out how he felt about Tony's death.
But for now -- they were here. Lila and Cooper and Nate and Laura, the names he'd had on a loop in his head, no longer a litany of loss but a celebration. Lila and Cooper and Nate and Laura. Lila and Cooper and Nate and Laura, here at last.
His children felt exactly the same as they had on the terrible day when they'd disappeared. Lila and Coop unexpectedly and endearingly childlike in their relieved hugs when they saw him, Nate's solid preschooler body pressed against his in mute love. Clint tried desperately to remember this feeling forever, the physical feeling of three pieces of his heart clicking back into place.
And then Laura. Oh, Laura. She took his face as she always did, and Clint knew she'd see things there that she would ask about later, but he didn't care. He just wanted to drink in the sight of his wife's face. He had forgotten how her hands felt every time he came home. He had forgotten her smell. He had forgotten the tiny relieved exhale she made before kissing him. All those tiny sensations, he had known they were gone but the full weight of what he lost didn't hit until he had some of it back.
Clint was suddenly incredibly grateful Laura hadn't lived through the last five years. He hadn't thought to be grateful he had been the one left behind, not until this moment, but seeing Laura and the kids again set off a wave of relief that they were stepping back into a world that he had, in some small way, helped make safer [1].
The hugging was very nice, but after a few minutes, Nate said, "I'm hungry."
"I don't think there are hot dogs," Clint said, right as Laura asked, "What happened?"
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," Clint replied. "But the mayonnaise went bad. And the only food I have on hand are MREs in the QuinJet."
Everyone had tucked into their beef bourguignon MREs [2] before Laura asked again, "What happened? I'm not even talking about the hair. I mean, the house looks --"
"Thanos," Clint replied. "A mad titan from another planet. He got hold of these … reality-warping stones, things that could rewrite the rules of the universe, and he eliminated 50% of all life in the universe. Anything with a brain. You all … disappeared. Five years ago. Then Thanos broke all his reality-warping stones so nobody else could undo what he did.
"We … look, I know this sounds ridiculous even as I say it, but this is what happened: One guy, Scott, the other dad who made the house arrest deal, proved we could time-travel, Tony figured out how to make it work for all of us, and we went back to three different places and times to get the stones. And then, Thanos found out somehow and followed us here, and there was ..."
How to explain? How to explain the gauntlet and the murder dogs and the wild scramble and Tony?
"Anyway, we undid Thanos's work. This somehow called Thanos down -- I'm not clear on all the details yet -- and there was another big fight. Thanos tried to get the stones back, we had to keep them away, eventually Tony made sure Thanos didn't keep the stones. He died doing it."
Laura pressed harder into Clint. She knew his feelings toward Tony were complicated [3] and Clint knew that she'd probably want him to talk more later.
"So how's the rest of the team?" she asked. "How's Nat taking …? Oh. Ohhhh."
She had put it together, but Clint had to tell the kids about Auntie Nat now.
"Nat and I had to get a stone called the Soul Stone. It's -- not even the weird-ass magicians I've met can fully explain what it does, only that it's very powerful for rewriting reality. We got to the planet where it's kept and … well, we couldn't get it without a fight. And Nat died."
That was most of the truth. Nobody needed to hear how Clint had been willing to kill himself for them. Maybe he'd tell Laura later about that desperate descent, how fucking tricky Nat had been to the very last. Nat had been the best of the Avengers, keeping the faith even when the rest of them had not, washing away all the red in her ledger with her life's blood.
Clint would spend the rest of his life living up to her universe-saving sacrifice. He spent the next fifteen minutes under a pile of weeping children and a weeping wife.
"Without Nat, none of this would have happened," he said. "And she did what she set out to do -- she brought back so many people. I know she loved you. You being here would have been what she wanted."
"I want Auntie Nat here!" Lila wailed.
And that was what broke Clint. When Lila had been a baby, her cries had been easy to decipher -- exhaustion, hunger, discomfort, loneliness. When she got older, her sobs could be soothed with the reassurance that the adults in her life could fix anything. But now -- he could hear in her tears how she had just understood for the first time that some things couldn't be fixed, only endured.
Clint sobbed in the circle of his family's arms, overwhelmed by the tiny heartbreak of watching his children get broken open by the world and the greater selfish relief that he could be there to hold the pieces for them.
The reunited Bartons spent the night together in Clint and Laura's big bed -- Clint on one end, Laura on the other, the children piled between them. At one point during the night, Clint surfaced from a doze to the sound of four other people breathing in perfect synchronization with him, then fell back into the best sleep he'd had in five years. It didn't even matter that Nate had spent much of the night with his feet lodged firmly in his father's right kidney.
The next morning, already adjusting to the burden of bereavement and the comfort of Dad back where he belonged on the farm, the Barton kids agitated to be allowed to roam the farmstead and see what had changed.
"Sure," Laura said. "Great idea. Let me get my boots --"
Clint caught his wife around the waist and muttered into her ear, "I haven't been alone with you in five years and we had these three in bed with us last night. Let them go."
"Coop," Laura said, smoothly switching gears. "You can drive the four-wheeler so long as all of you wear helmets."
The kids pelted out of the house. After the adults heard the roar of the four-wheeler, the adults pelted upstairs.
After. After Clint reacquainted himself with his real, live wife, melding the flickers of memory with the experience of warm skin against his. He was on his back, enjoying the warm weight of Laura's damp thigh against his own and tracing the outline of one of her breasts [4], when Laura spoke.
"Okay, what is with the hair? And the … tattoo?"
"You don't like the tattoo?" Clint asked. It had taken him nearly a year to get that sleeve, listening to highly useful chatter about the Yakuza as he was inked.
"I …" Laura trailed off, then tried again. "I know it's only been a day for me. It's a lot of changes in you for me to understand. Not all of them are on the surface."
"I'll shave my head down today," Clint said.
"No, no, it's … It clearly means something to you. It all does. It feels --" Laura laughed a little nervously. "I'm used to thinking of you as Clint. We built a family together, we built this home. Or Hawkeye. One of the Avengers, the one who pulls everyone back to what's real."
She traced the grim reaper on his arm. "This is -- this is who you were without us, isn't it?"
"I'll see about getting it lasered off," Clint said.
"No," Laura replied. "The Avengers undid something, but we can't pretend that your last five years didn't happen."
And to Clint's horror, Laura choked up.
"Honey," he said. "Oh, honey. Honey. Honey. No, no no --"
This was not how this was supposed to go. They were supposed to have the kind of deliciously illicit sex two middle-aged people enjoyed when their kids were out of the house, then go into town and see what the grocery situation was like, because they didn't want to get murdered in their sleep by two teenagers who were tired of MREs [5].
"You spent too much time alone, didn't you?" Laura asked shakily, trying to breathe her way back through the tears.
Technically, Clint had spent a lot of time around large numbers of people. But it had not been what he would consider quality time. He grimaced in a way that he hoped neither confirmed nor denied what Laura was asking.
She ran her fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp in a way he hadn't consciously remembered missing so much. "Oh, babe. Babe. Why?"
"I couldn't save you. And the ones who were left -- they wouldn't understand. Nobody understood --"
"Nat?"
"I didn't know how to reach her. International fugitive, remember? Fury was gone too. I … I was alone. And it was awful, yeah. But now it's not."
And that was true, Clint thought. Even with Nat permanently gone to a place beyond the reach of magic. His life had been awful and now it was not, and it was all thanks to her.
"This is a lot to process. Good thing we have time," Laura said shakily, then laughed.
A few days later, after one trip into town to drop off the old fridge in the dump [6], buy a new one, then buy another four bags of pizza rolls for the kids, Clint was detaching the rotary cutter from the tractor when another QuinJet came down. He was not surprised to see Nick Fury stride down the gangplank once there was enough wind to make his black leather trenchcoat flare dramatically.
Clint was, however, surprised to see Steve with him.
"You're invited to a funeral," Nick called out.
"You couldn't email?" Clint replied.
"Uncle Nick!" Lila called, racing to see her godfather.
Of course he wouldn't email. Fury would want to check in on the kids in person, probably out of a desire to do right by Natasha. The colonel was immediately swamped by the Barton Kid Experience, leaving Steve and Clint staring at each other awkwardly.
"A funeral?" Clint finally said, to put the poor guy out of his misery.
"Pepper's finalized the arrangements for Tony," Steve confirmed. "She thought it best to do so before we all …"
… Before we all stopped being the Avengers, Clint finished mentally. There would be Avengers, but his Avengers were done.
"I also need to make something right," Steve said. He nodded, "Ma'am."
Laura slid under Clint's arm and nodded back.
"I wanted to apologize earlier but the circumstances weren't there," Steve said. "I'm sorry for what I asked of your family."
"Thank you. I appreciate that," Laura said. "Clint makes his own decisions. But I appreciate the thought. You spent all that time with Natasha, on the run?"
Steve's face fell into lines of barely repressed grief and Clint marveled at how the captain could keep losing people he loved yet remain worthy of wielding that damned hammer.
"We were … Nat chose us as her family then, me and Sam and Wanda and her. It was an honor."
Laura took a deep breath and Clint felt guilty for all the crying these days seemed to inspire. "Come and stay for lunch," she said. "I want to hear all about it."
Steve nodded and headed toward Nick. Clint leaned in to kiss Laura's head and mutter, "No pizza rolls, okay?"
"Exactly who do you think I am?" Laura snapped back, but there was no heat in her tone.
Clint would remember that lunch for the rest of his life. In those long, golden hours, Steve displayed a surprisingly wicked sense of humor, keeping everyone howling in laughter as he detailed the exploits of their group up to the moment of the snap. Natasha felt closer than she had in years.
"The lectures she used to give Wanda about sticking to curfew after she kept meeting up with Vision!" Steve chuckled. "Sam used to say that Nat could give his mom a run in the not-angry-just-disappointed lectures."
"Wanda kept sneaking out to see Vision?" Laura asked incredulously.
"You couldn't introduce her to a nice Wakadan warrior instead?" Clint chimed in. "She had to date a Windows 95 file server?"
"I don't get that reference and I don't plan to," Steve replied. And for whatever reason, that set them all off again, laughing until they sobbed. Laura snuggled into Clint's shoulder, drying her face on his t-shirt sleeve, and Clint saw Steve smile.
A few days later, a funeral where Clint stood by his family, proud to let everyone see who he fought for while also suppressing the urge to beat the shit out of Thunderbolt Ross. There was a moment where Scott Lang looked at Lila and his mouth twisted; Clint remembered that Cassie was a teenager now. There was a moment where Nate beheld a pretty young woman with antennae and when she bent down to say hello, she peered intently at him before breaking into a smile as radiant as her antennae had become and saying, "I like you too!"
And a moment where Clint looked at Steve and knew, without being able to explain how he knew, that it was the last time he'd see the captain. No, he thought. Not like this.
He walked over and asked, casual as can be, "So is it you or Banner who's returning all those stones?"
"I think Banner would stick out a little more than I would," Steve replied. "I'll explain for him when I return the Time Stone."
"Well. When you see the red drapey guy on Vormir, kick his ass extra hard for me. For Nat."
"With pleasure," Steve replied.
They were quiet for a moment, one of those silences where two people are looking for the right words to express a profound truth.
"Happy to have the love of your life back?" Steve asked.
"More than I can say," Clint replied honestly. "There's more than one kind of love like that -- Nat was my family as much as Laura and the kids are. And I'll miss her forever. But to have someone back in your life after you've given up hope?"
"I'm happy for you, Barton," Steve said. He turned to go and Clint, prodded by that sad unexplainable certainty, called out, "Rogers! Be careful where you're going."
"Roger that," Steve replied, grinning as he walked off.
Later, Sam would come by the house and tell him what Steve had chosen to do. Later, Clint would email what had turned out to be a surprisingly large number of people on a closed Avengers email list and remind them all that he was hosting Thanksgiving this year, because it was the only thing he could think to say in the face of this kind of surprise. Later, Clint would make a note to call Steve and ask, "How did you do it? How did you live through finding and losing the love of your life twice?"
But in the soft twilight present, there was his family. There was a red-haired teenager who was alone now that her surrogate big sister wasn't around to fight for her existence. And what the hell -- it had worked out well for the Bartons the last time they had loved a lethal young redhead who was all alone.
"Come on, Wanda," Clint said. "I've got a room at the house ready for you. Come on home."
*
[1] And that was not even counting the many, many contributions Clint had made to reducing organized crime worldwide.
[2] One Thursday night, Tony had figured out a tiny, recyclable sous vide system the size of a nickel and Natasha had done the rest. Ah, God, Nat. He knew why she'd insisted on a paprikash recipe for one of the MREs, but he'd never get to ask her about who she was thinking about with the brisket, charoset and matzoh MRE.
[3] Seriously. Who thought secret underwater prisons were a thing the good guys did? Who thought throwing their coworkers into those prisons wasn't going to be taken personally?
[5] One of Clint's petty pleasures during house arrest had been calling the FBI agent assigned to his house arrest and making that stuffed suit drive him 75 minutes into town for groceries. "Teenagers, man," Clint would say as he chucked five 90-count bags of Totino's pizza rolls into a cart at Costco.
[6] "In my defense," Clint had said to a furious Laura, "my entire family had been disappeared. Cleaning the fridge was not at the top of my mind." Then he made a mental note to be very, very careful about how many times he could point out that he had been going through some things, especially to a woman who had unwelcome firsthand knowledge of what five-year-old leftovers smelled like.