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Clint doesn’t remember his parents, or the house he grew up in, or the name of his first pet.
Correction: Clint chooses not to remember his parents, or the house he grew up in, or the name of his first pet.
This is what Clint chooses to remember: eight nights of burning candles every December, two candles every Friday, soft lullabies of songs wrapped in fragmented Hebrew and the taste of apples and honey.
This is what Clint chooses to remember: being homeless and starving at sixteen, allowing himself to be taken in by a woman who has extended her hand in pity, nights spent in an unfamiliar bed where he stares up at a shelf that includes a star with six points and a giant silver Menorah.
This is what Clint chooses to remember: lectures and stories about forgiveness, about children of God and about the tablets known as The Ten Commandments, the ones that include verses such as thou shall not kill and thou shall not steal and thou shall honor thy father and thy mother.
So when he comes to S.H.I.E.L.D. some years later, when he’s filling out his paperwork in Fury’s office and he gets to the box that asks him to choose a religious affiliation, he lingers a little too long over the answer he wants to give, the phantom blood stains on his hand forcing his fingers towards another response entirely.
When he leaves, he tries to forget the whole thing even happened.
***
“I’m Jewish.”
“Excuse me?” Natasha looks up from the report she’s been reading with eyes that look like they’re going to fall out of her head, and Clint raises his eyebrows.
“Are you serious?”
“Are you serious?”
Clint uncrosses his legs from where he’s been curled up next to her. “You’ve never seen me go to church or light a Christmas tree, and for the past three years, I’ve avoided anyone's Easter dinner invitations like they’re the plague. And you’re acting like I just told you that I’m gay.”
“Well, maybe you are. We haven’t had sex in over a month.”
“Natasha.” He grinds his teeth together while she folds her arms in disapproval.
“How come I’ve known you for the longest that I’ve known any person on earth, and I had no idea that you were Jewish?”
“Because…” Clint trails off, biting his lip, unable to come up with an answer. “Look, it doesn’t matter, okay?”
“Yes, it does,” Natasha says, her voice hard, and he can’t quite figure out why she feels so offended by this piece of information, other than the fact that she’s upset he hasn’t told her sooner. It’s far from the most shocking thing he’s ever admitted; that honor goes to his parents’ treatment of him during his childhood, and as far as random transfers of information go, it’s definitely on the lower end of things that he might even feel ashamed or nervous to open up about.
“Well, fine. I’m Jewish. Okay?”
Natasha glares but doesn’t say anything else, picking up her work and settling back into the couch. Clint watches as she angles her gaze towards the floor, surreptitiously avoiding his eyes.
***
When Clint is stuck inside Loki’s head, when he’s fielding orders and when he can’t separate what’s blue and what’s not, what’s right and what’s wrong, he forces himself to think.
Chizku v’imzu; al tiru…Adonai Elohehecha hu haholaech imach, lo yarpecha v’lo ya’azvecha.
Be strong and of good courage; have no fear…for Adonai your God is the One who goes with you, never failing you or forsaking you.
His brain is caught somewhere between monsters and magic and he doesn’t really understand what the words mean but he says them anyway, because aside from Natasha’s face, it’s the only true thing he knows he can pull from his soul.
***
“Barton’s Jewish,” Natasha announces at their debrief meeting the next day, and Clint swivels around in his chair so fast that he thinks he might make himself puke.
“Jewish?” Maria looks confused. “Your paperwork said you were agnostic.”
“Yeah, that’s one way to put it,” Clint says, digging his hands into his knees. “Since when have you memorized my paperwork? And since when did S.H.I.E.L.D. start to care so much about religious affiliations?”
“Since when do agents hide their personal lives from their supervisors and their partners?” Natasha challenges and Clint glowers, picking up his coffee cup.
“Anything else you want to berate me for, or should we reschedule this meeting for another day?”
Maria looks a little taken aback and Natasha presses her lips together and after a moment, the conversation resumes enough to be normal, though Clint can’t help the feeling of apprehension that’s taken up residence in his stomach. When they’re finally dismissed, he doesn’t bother to wait for anyone else, and marches out of the room before someone can stop him.
***
Congregation Beth Elohim, with its wide, ornate steps, large Menorah, and architecture that looks more fit for a church than a synagogue, has sat in the depths of Park Slope for over 150 years, though Clint can’t remember the last time he’s visited other than a few High Holiday services after first moving to the neighborhood. He figures those hardly counted, anyway, since he was always late and routinely left after the sermon, unable to settle himself enough to sit through the five or six hours of prayer.
He enters feeling slightly out of place, grabbing for a black kippah from one of the large bins near the door and fixing it awkwardly on top of his head. It feels strange, uncomfortable, as if he’s trying to reconnect with a part of himself that doesn’t seem to fit anymore, a piece of his life that used to fit so snugly but that now has lost its shape, and is trying to fit jaggedly into a hole that has since closed.
There are services this Saturday, he notices from a sign on the wall, along with some Minyan sessions and other small gatherings throughout the week. He takes off the thumbtack and removes the sign, folding it into squares and putting it in his pocket, and when he gets home he attaches it to the front of his fridge.
***
When Clint Barton meets Natasha Romanov at the end of an arrow, he’s surprised at how quickly he finds himself drawn to her, and surprised at how much he feels like he wants to get to know her. It’s a strange sensation, because Clint’s never thought of himself as someone who needed another person to center him. He didn’t like to put his stock in things that had the potential to leave you, like his father and his mother and his brother, like Trickshot and Bobbi and Jess.
Ma’amido al HaEmet. He’ll come across this particular phrase a few years later when his therapist encourages him to remember stories of his past. He’ll learn that in translation, it means “to place or set others on the path of truth,” and he’ll start to wonder if maybe he’s not such a terrible person after all.
***
“Hey, you wanna come to temple with me this weekend?” he asks Natasha while they’re walking to the cafeteria, and as the words leave his mouth, part of him thinks he might have lost his mind entirely.
“Is that something you do when you’re Jewish?” Natasha asks innocuously and Clint nods, joining her in the long lunch line.
“Yes.”
Natasha squints at his face, as if sizing him up. “Okay,” she finally agrees, taking a tray and loading a plate with some wilted looking lettuce. “Sure. I’ll go to temple with you.”
***
They tell him Coulson is dead. They don’t tell him he was the cause, because he wasn’t, but it doesn’t do much to assuage the guilt he feels churning through his insides and he walks back to his apartment alone feeling heavier than he did when he had someone else in his brain, shrugging off touches of people he trusts that scream the words help and understanding.
He closes the door and kneels down in the dark, pressing his face into the hardwood floor. He thinks of his father and of his mother, and he tries to remember what people would say, what the rabbi in the long tallit would say when he stood over the coffins at his parents’ funeral. There are words, but they feel stuck in his throat, choking him as they pile up forcefully, until he wants nothing more than to gag them out.
Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mei raba .
He hasn’t recited the Mourner’s Kaddish in years. It comes off stilted and broken on his tongue and it fits, he thinks, another chipped part of him to add to the collection of fragments he’s been harboring, hoping one day he’ll break apart enough to be put fully back together.
***
At eight thirty on a Saturday morning, Clint stands nervously on the steps of the synagogue, twisting his hands together in silence. He ignores the looks of other prayer-goers as they walk past; his suit is slightly wrinkled but he figures it’s better than nothing, and the only other unwashed clothes he had found in his closet were sweatpants and flannel shirts, not exactly what he would classify as temple wear.
“You came,” he says when he sees Natasha crossing the street. She’s cloaked in minimal make-up and she’s wearing a simple blue dress patterned with flowers, like something she might put on if they were going undercover, or if they were forced to dress up for one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s holiday parties.
“So did you,” she says, slipping an arm into his. They walk up the stairs together, Clint grabbing a kippah and two prayer books, and position themselves in the back of the sanctuary where they know they’re mostly hidden from view. Clint’s initially worried about the whole thing, about how she’ll take it, but it’s not too bad, not even the long silences of meditation and the words that seem familiar and foreign to him all at once, not until the rabbi starts in on his sermon and Clint catches wind of his own name.
“The Torah speaks of virtue, and of identity. In the great Battle of New York a few months ago, we saw the demonstration of selflessness in those who we trust to defend us: Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye…”
He feels his hands become clammy, the entire world starting to spin beneath him and he pushes the prayer book into Natasha’s hands while stumbling out of the row and towards the door.
“Clint,” Natasha says sharply when she finds him, hunched over the grass outside, dry heaving into the ground. She places a hand on his back and he uses her touch to help his own breathing slow.
There are things to say but he’s not sure how to say them, there are memories to think about but he’s not sure how to understand them.
So he lets Natasha say the words, because he’s long accepted that when his body is incapable of functioning, hers will work twice as hard to keep him alive.
“I want to understand.”
***
Understanding comes first, in the way that it always does: with food.
“Challah.” Clint motions to the ingredients on his counter, and Natasha gives him a skeptical look.
“Challah,” she repeats slowly, trying out the words on her tongue as she picks up the egg carton. “It’s just bread.”
“It’s more than just bread,” Clint says, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and breaking apart the dough into long, gooey strands. “It’s tradition. It commemorates when the Israelites wandered the desert after the Exodus of Egypt.”
Natasha shrugs. “Looks like bread to me,” she says but there’s curiousness hidden in her tone, and she reaches over tentatively to take one of the pieces of dough, her elbow brushing his arm.
“See, you weave it together, like this,” Clint says, sinking his thumbs into the dough to push the ends together. “And then you kind of braid it, like this.” He watches out of the corner of his eye as she works slowly along with him, one half of her tongue sticking out of her mouth as she concentrates on making sure the thin substance doesn’t break in half.
“I’ve never made bread before,” she says as she steps away to wash her hands, and Clint places the finished rolls on a baking sheet.
“My mother and I used to. Before, well…before. She would pick us up from school every Friday and we would spend our afternoons in the kitchen with her. It was pretty much the only time we got to spend together before our dad made things hell.”
“I take it your dad wasn’t really into this kind of stuff,” Natasha says quietly, and Clint tries to laugh, though the sound is hollow and solemn.
“Not exactly.”
He feels Natasha’s lips on his neck and then his shoulders, and he allows her to mark his body with her mouth, as if her actions can produce some sort of protective armor against the thoughts that threaten to overwhelm him.
***
“This is insane,” Natasha says as they eat breakfast together, looking over a collection of papers that Clint has printed out. “How are you supposed to know what kind of Jewish you even are? It looks like you have ten different choices.”
“Well, it’s how you grow up,” Clint explains, leaning over as he takes a sip of coffee. “If you’re really religious, you’re Orthodox. Reform is like the opposite end completely, you do the traditions and everything, but you don’t turn off the lights over the weekend and wear specific clothing.”
“So which one were you?” Natasha asks, looking at him curiously. Clint frowns.
“I don’t really know,” he says, trying and failing to keep the wistful tone out of his voice. “We never got that far. Probably reform, though. We definitely weren’t religious, but I remember my mom taught us all the prayers.”
“But Barton’s not even a Jewish name,” Natasha protests, as if she’s still trying to find a loophole in his explanation, and Clint shrugs.
“Eastern European Jewish surname,” he says. “Probably changed somewhere along the way when my grandparents immigrated, though I’m not sure what the original origins are. Clinton, well, no idea where that came from, but they got it right with my brother.”
Natasha reaches for a piece of toast, chewing for a long time before she swallows. “There was a girl I met when I came out of the Red Room,” she says a little thoughtfully, as if trying to place a forgotten memory. “I worked with her for a bit, when we were both on our own. She said she was Jewish, that her parents had come here from Germany. I never asked her about it, though.”
“Never?” Clint asks in slight surprise, because it is and has always been Natasha’s nature to find out as much as she can about the people she becomes involved with. Natasha shakes her head.
“I didn’t really understand it – religion, I mean. It never meant that much to me. Not when I had so many other things that made up who I was supposed to be.” She gives him a slightly sad smile, as if she’s realizing something that has for so long been hidden in the deepest parts of her soul.
***
They ask him if he wants a priest of a rabbi.
He doesn’t know how to answer, and he doesn’t want to answer. He doesn’t know what Natasha prefers in this kind of situation, he’s never even asked whether or not she believes in God, and it’s not like they’ve ever sat down and talked about going to church to pay for their sins. He figures that her past, like everything else, is a tightly wound enigma that even she might not know, and since it’s something that’s never really come up between them, he’s never bothered to dwell on it.
It’s never been anything he’s needed to know to feel connected to her, and he refuses to answer because she’s not dying, she’s not going to die, she’s going to pull through and she’s going to survive.
One by one, the doctors and S.H.I.E.L.D. officials leave until it’s just him and her in the hospital room, beeping monitors and squeaky shoes against the hallway floor. Clint takes one of her hands in his own, running his fingers over the cuts on her skin.
HaKadosh Baruch Hu yimalei rachamim aleihem.
Later, when she’s feeling better, when she can sit up without looking like death, she’ll ask him what happened. She’ll mention that she thought she heard strange words that she couldn’t understand.
He won’t tell her what he said or why he said it, he’ll just tell her that he’s happy she’s okay.
***
They spend Hannukah together, lighting candles in a small Menorah in his apartment as the first snow of the year falls lightly outside, piling white dust onto the fire escape.
“So let me get this straight,” Natasha says as she watches him place the shamash in its proper holder above the rest, the flames of the candles below stretching upwards in long, lazy beams of light. “There are eight nights, because a miracle light burned for eight days?”
“Yes,” Clint says. “The temple was destroyed by the Maccabees, and there was only supposed to be enough oil to burn for one day.”
“Eight days,” Natasha repeats, and Clint shoots her a look.
“Is that really so hard to believe?”
“Well, you’re insinuating miracles exist,” Natasha says with a smug grin. “Then, sure, if you’re that kind of believer, I guess it’s not hard to imagine.”
Clint lets out a breath. “Judaism isn’t really about believing in miracles,” he says, staring at the candles, and suddenly he feels like he’s trying to convince himself of his own words. “It’s about faith. Family. Traditions.”
“Is that why you’ve never done any of this before?” Natasha inquires quietly, leaning on her elbows. The edges of her red hair curl towards the fire, casting her face in a warm, iridescent glow. “Because of all that?”
“Kind of,” Clint admits as his chest starts to burn, because it doesn’t feel right just yet to talk about the bigger picture, the real reasons behind why he hasn’t ever bothered to look too much into the beliefs of his past. Natasha seems to get it, though, pulling him away from the Menorah until he’s looking her in the eye, their faces level.
“It can be our tradition, if you want.”
***
Passover’s not really Natasha’s holiday.
It’s not really Clint’s holiday, either. He’s never been a fan of the whole ritual where you don’t eat decent-tasting food for over a week, though, he admits as he procures a box of what he thinks is most likely leftover year-old matzah from the grocery shelf, the offerings have gotten better in terms of taste and popularity.
“Gross,” Natasha says after she has her first taste, on their walk home from the store. She eats it anyway, though, and after Clint convinces her it tastes better when you actually add things like jelly or butter, she seems slightly more receptive.
Their sedar is not anything that Clint would have grown up with, down to the makeshift table and temple-borrowed Haggadahs. And because they’re both tired, it’s more of an abbreviated version of the dinner ritual, with English readings and more eating than talking. But he does at least get to teach her how to make a Hillel sandwich, and he shows her the sedar plate, and he tells her the story of Moses.
“There’s something kind of symbolic about being rescued from death,” Natasha says later as she peers at images on the Internet, drawings of babies in wicker baskets being put into the river. “I guess I can see the big deal.”
Clint moves his hand over hers, brushing back hair still damp from the shower, and kisses the side of her head. After so many years together there are still times that he doesn’t really know what to say, but when they can talk to each other like this, through silence and touch, it becomes enough.
***
If Clint’s being honest with himself, he’s not really sure what he’s doing when he returns to the Park Slope synagogue, this time dressed more casually than his last outing. But Rabbi Abraham Hochstein doesn’t look like he’s going to throw him out or yell at him, so he thinks maybe this whole thing won’t be as terrible as he’s imagined it to be.
“Clint Barton,” the rabbi says upon his arrival, and Clint sits down in the mahogany chair, staring into a white-bearded face aged in a way that he thinks he can only be lucky enough to replicate.
“You’re looking at me as if I can see all of your sins,” he continues, and it breaks the ice enough for Clint to laugh as he rubs a hand across his face.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he admits, feeling a little embarrassed. “I’m not really religious.”
“That doesn’t mean you still can’t participate in Judaism and its traditions,” Rabbi Hochstein says. “There’s no code that states that you need to be observant in order to upholds the standards of your religion.”
“Yeah, but see, that’s…” Clint trails off, because where does he even start? That’s the problem? I’m a killer and I’ve done really terrible moral things in my past and I’m not really reflective of the type of code that Judaism teaches? No matter what way he thinks about phrasing his thoughts, nothing seems like it’s going to make for a good conversation.
“I’m worried I haven’t really done that,” he says after a long pause, trying to skirt around the issue as much as he can. “The whole upholding standards thing.”
“And are you aware that no one expects you to be perfect, Mr. Barton? That’s why we allow repentance on Yom Kippur. We celebrate a new year that allows us to start fresh, to absolve ourselves of our sins. We let God forgive us for the things we’ve done that we’re not proud of.”
“I’m not sure if I can actually be forgiven for anything,” Clint says, leaning back in the chair, and Rabbi Hochstein does the same.
“I know that you’re a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. I know you fought in the Battle of New York.”
“Well, then, you know a lot,” Clint replies, trying to keep his voice from stinging, and the rabbi looks a little amused.
“How many lives have you saved, Mr. Barton?”
“I dunno.” He shrugs. “A bunch. Probably more than I can count, if anyone ever looked at my files.”
“And don’t you think that no matter how many things you’ve done wrong, you deserve to feel good about that fact?”
Clint falls silent and sits on the question for awhile without responding. He thinks of Natasha, thinks of Barney and Fury, and when he leaves, he thinks maybe he doesn’t feel quite so lost.
***
“You have a holiday where you dress up for fun? Why don’t you just call it Halloween?”
Clint grins, maneuvering the heavy wig over Natasha’s red bob. “Does Halloween involve going to listen to an oral story, read by a rabbi, while everyone interacts like its their own version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show?”
“Well, that depends how drunk you get,” Natasha says, wrapping the shawl of her costume around herself and staring in the hall mirror. “This is because I cut my hair, isn’t it?”
“I did like it long,” Clint admits. “Anyway, tell me the name of the holiday, and maybe I won’t make you walk down the street while pretending to be Queen Esther.”
Natasha doesn’t miss a beat. “Purim,” she says triumphantly, and gives Clint a smile that reaches her eyes.
***
Clint’s never really thought about his death.
He’s thought about his death in the sense that he knows, one day, everyone including himself is going to die. That’s going to happen, whether he likes it or not, and it’s just a matter of how long he can outrun the ticking clock that’s associated with his line of work.
He’s thought about death when it’s been his partner on the other end of it, fighting for her life against what’s usually considered all odds. But he’s never really thought about death as being a thing that he’d deal with, so when he gets captured by Hydra and is left to essentially rot away in a cell, he realizes he has no idea what’s going to happen if he dies.
He’ll get some sort of Jewish burial, complete with prayers, and a year after, he’ll get an unveiling of his gravesite. He’ll go to heaven, maybe, because he thinks he’s spent a good amount of time reclaiming enough of his religious beliefs that he wouldn’t be considered entirely worthless when it came to saving.
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.
The Shema, he remembers his mother saying, while helping Clint to learn his first real prayer. The most important one to know. The declaration of faith.
His lips close around the last vowel and he closes his eyes against the world. When he wakes up again, pressed into Natasha’s side, he wonders for the first time if maybe it’s not God that he’s been putting his faith into.
***
Clint’s been home from Latvia for three weeks when Natasha calls and tells him that there’s a meeting at Avengers Tower, that he needs to report immediately, and he spends the whole ride over wondering what the hell could be so damn important that Tony had to call an in-person meeting, especially when he had enough tech at his disposal to talk to them all by hologram, not to mention by phone.
“What’s going on?” Clint asks in confusion when he finally reaches the door, opening it to reveal Natasha in a short dress and sly smile.
“It’s Friday, right?”
“Uh.” Clint scratches the side of his head, still finding himself confused. “Yeah. So what?”
“So, we’re going to have Shabbat dinner,” Natasha explains as she leads him into the Tower. “All of us.”
“Us?” Clint blinks in surprise as a table comes into view, laden with plates and wine goblets and two candles in separate holders. Steve’s mixing a salad and Tony is arguing with Pepper about something he can’t quite make out, and Clint turns to Natasha with a look that he knows borders on shocked.
“Yes. Us. We wanted to put something together for you.”
“Correction: Natasha wanted to put something together for you,” Tony says, wiping his hands on his pants as he walks out of the kitchen. “I mean, you can thank all of us, but I’m pretty sure she’s the one who’s going to get the action tonight.”
“Tony,” Pepper says warningly as she stirs what Clint recognizes as matzo ball soup. He barely has time to formulate a response before the billionaire is in his face, smelling faintly of brisket.
“So when were you gonna tell us you were Jewish, Barton?” he asks mockingly, and Clint laughs.
“I don’t know. It never came up in my Avengers interview.”
“Huh. Maybe we’ll have to start incorporating that. Although I’m not sure what religion Thor would be. Do they even have religions in Asgard?”
“Next time you travel to space, you should ask him,” Bruce says, entering the kitchen with a plate of rolls. “Sorry I’m late, by the way. The deli closed early.”
“And we couldn’t get challah on short notice,” Natasha says a little apologetically, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “You would think that it would be easy to find one, but every store I checked was sold out. With everything going on, I didn’t have time to try to make one, or I would have.”
Clint shakes his head, feeling slightly dazed. “You guys seriously didn’t need to do this.”
“Aw, come on. Where’s your sense of tradition?” Steve smiles, shaking Clint’s shoulder gently. “Besides, it’s not every day that you get Stark to cook.”
“Better not let Potts hear you,” Tony says as Bruce grabs for a bottle of wine, pouring generously into each of their cups.
“Wanna do the honors?” Steve asks, handing over a well-worn kippah, and Clint knows better to ask where they’ve gotten all the fixings for a Shabbat dinner. He takes the skull hat from Steve and places it over his head, finding it fits more snugly than he’s expected. He watches in surprise as Natasha takes another and does the same.
“You know, ladies don’t really have to –”
“Oh, I know,” Natasha interrupts nonchalantly; as if he’s telling her something she’s learned long ago. “Shut up, Barton. I told you. These are our traditions.”
Clint smiles and strikes a match, lowering the burning flame to each candlewick before blowing it out completely. He raises his hands, covering his eyes and takes a deep breath.
Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel shabbat.
The candles glow brightly as he removes his hands, Natasha’s fingers curling tightly around his waist.
***
Sometimes, he remembers his past.
But he prefers to remember his present and his future, candles that act as torches of hope, burning brightly every Friday night after dinner, Natasha’s head in his lap as she learns the pronunciation of Hebrew letters, her body warm and safe against his own.