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The sound was comforting, but she wasn’t willing to admit it. The gentle, constant pebbling of the rain pouring down, hitting the windshield and pausing a moment before rolling towards gravity or being sideswiped by the wiper blades brought back the only fond memories she held from her childhood. That mixed with the Al Green softly pouring out of the stereo in her hijacked Ford Escort.
The roads had been smooth sailing for too long, the universe told her, when the flashing red and blue lights appeared ahead of her. She slowed down to accommodate and eventually rolled to a stop behind a pickup truck.
Natasha didn’t think twice about it. The roads had been slick for most of their drive. She could see a small delivery van overturned half a mile ahead of them. It would probably be a bit of a wait. She glanced at the clock, gauging her time on the road to be just over three hours, and then turned to her passenger.
Clint had been sleeping for most of their drive. He fought it for the first leg of the journey, until they were out of state and he felt more at ease. They’d been partners for so long he didn’t need to tell her. People were after him, that much she knew. It was worse than it had been any other time, which was something he figured out on her own, before she had found him in the stairwell of his apartment complex.
He was still conscious. Something that made her stomach turn. There weren’t a lot of things that jerked Nat to her core, but the brutal way her partner had been left was one of them.
Clint had clearly made his way from his apartment into the stairwell on his own, after the tracksuit men had left. Either trying to chase after them, or get himself to someone who could help. It was unclear. He wouldn’t speak. Or couldn’t. Natasha wasn’t sure. It was obvious they intended on leaving him to die.
His hair was matted with blood in patches, places where it had pooled and congealed and stuck as he lay on the floor. His nose was broken and bloodied, a fresh indicator of how bad it had been returning when Nat tried to set it straight. His white tee was streaked and speckled with at least three different shades of blood and his knuckles were scuffed, reassuring Natasha that he at least tried to fight back. It had been his eyes though, in the end, which did her in. Not so much that they were bloodshot and one was so swollen it was almost shut. It was that they didn’t look like they belonged to him that tore her in two.
She thought back to her initial reaction when she found him. How she had rushed him, and how he reacted with terror – his whole body shaking – until he realized who was coming at him. It had been her voice that caught his attention, and how it broke when calling his name. His eyes reflected a soul that was shattered into nonexistence, but they closed and the tension his muscles held lent to ease was she spoke and cradled his head. She couldn’t help the few tears she shed and she tried to gather him into her arms. She couldn’t help that he felt them and she nestled her cheek in the nape of his neck.
She didn’t regret the intimate touch. She needed to connect, to let both of them know it was going to be okay now. To let him know that she was there now and to remind her that his heart was still beating.
Clint’s breathing had become less of a fight and more of a natural reflex once he’d fallen asleep. But it was still a struggle.
She repeatedly glanced at him, trying to read him when she could. There was something in his eyes she’d never seen before. A strange kind of hopelessness behind the cloudy vision. The Clint she knew had always been resilient. Such a persistent, stubborn fighter. This Clint had been worked over and hit at home. She knew his friends and neighbors were in danger. She knew how much he cared about them and that he would die to protect them. They both knew that he almost did.
The music faded and changed into something else that was vaguely familiar as Clint shifted, moving for the first time since she’d placed him in the passenger seat. He curled onto his side, still in his seatbelt, and brought his hands up under his chin. A jolt shot through him and his body let go a spasm. His hands shot to grip the seat as a lane of traffic was opened ahead and the truck in front of them started to inch forward.
Natasha reached for her other half, finding his hands as if they were magnetically drawn to each other. Clint fought to lace their fingers together, pressing the back of her hand to part of his face that wasn’t cut open.
She could feel the heat coming off him like an oven when they touched. His five o’clock shadow had deepened like a golden sunset and scratched at her soft skin as they began to pick up speed again. She didn’t mind it for a second.
He moved as though he were trying to speak, making an attempt to look up at her, but it proved too hard for him. He resigned to a whisper with his head down, staring at a space between the dashboard and his lap.
It was two words. Part of a song they had shared a liking for almost a decade before. A tune that could set them calm in an instant. Something they had sung to the Hulk to get Bruce back after a calamity in the SHIELD office.
Just Breathe.
He drifted back to sleep an exit or two later, still muttering those two words under his breath to her as the exits passed them by. Natasha wasn’t sure if Clint was reassuring her or giving instructions to himself, but the sound of his voice against the rain was comforting. And she was going to be damn sure to tell him as soon as he woke up.