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1. LAURA
When Clint says he’s coming home and he’s bringing someone with him, Laura doesn’t blink.
She doesn’t blink, because it’s Clint. Clint brought home the scared teenager who tried to rob him when they were first dating and Clint brought home his friend from the circus when he had nowhere else to go after they were married and Clint brought home a girl whose truck had broken down four days after Cooper was born.
Clint had brought home Natasha.
She doesn’t blink, but she does say, “I could kill you,” through a mouthful of mashed potatoes that she’s snuck behind her kids’ back, because she had told them earlier absolutely no one could eat Christmas dinner before their actual Christmas dinner.
“You were supposed to be home a week ago,” she points out, using the advantage of their Facetime to give him a very specific look. “And you were supposed to bring presents, and check out that new restaurant for my parents when they visit next month.”
“Yeah, well, things got complicated,” Clint says, and Laura doesn’t mention that she can see that because his face looks like it’s seen better days. “And I did bring back presents, if my overweight suitcase is any indication, and I did check out that restaurant but it’s not my fault if your parents don’t like it.”
“Okay,” Laura says with a sigh. She props the phone up against the bread basket and wipes her hands on her pants. “So tell me who you’re bringing home.”
“Well.” Clint clears his throat, suddenly looking sheepish, and Laura knows that look. “It’s...a few people.”
“I hate you,” Laura replies, even though she really doesn’t and could never, especially after the last five years. She sinks down into the kitchen chair, closing her eyes.
“They’re nice,” Clint continues, his voice teetering between hesitant and excited. “Really. One of them is the girl I’ve been helping. I mean, I kinda owe it to her at this point, I’ve been kind of a pain in the ass --”
“There’s something new,” Laura interjects under her breath.
“The other is someone who had me on her hit list but that obviously didn’t happen. And then there’s Lucky.”
“Who the hell is Lucky?” Laura asks, furrowing her brow. In response, somewhere out of frame, she hears a bark. She grits her teeth.
“So, let me get this straight,” she says, her voice laced with both doubt and skepticism as she regards him carefully through the tiny phone screen. “You’re bringing three people home. One of them idolizes you, one of them wants to kill you, and one of them is a dog?”
Cint shrugs, as if she’s just asked him about the daily grocery list. “What, is that a problem?”
Yes, it’s a problem, Laura thinks, because she has no idea if she has enough food for two extra people and a dog. It’s a problem because Nate has been going through a clingy streak lately that she’s not sure will be helped by more people vying for his father’s attention, and it’s a problem because she hasn’t really cleaned the house as well as she should have for anyone who wasn’t family.
But it’s not a problem. Not really. Because Clint would take in every kid off the street if it meant he could help them. If it meant that he could offer them a warm meal or a chance to be loved for one night or one weekend. If it meant that he could offer them the things he never had growing up because no one would have taken him in or given him a chance.
“Pick up extra paper plates,” she says after a pause. “And call me when you’re almost home.”
Clint smiles and the grin is so sincere and humble, Laura feels like she can almost forgive him for the tirade she’s about to go off on with her best girlfriend when they hang up.
“Yes, ma’am.”
2. CLINT
He thinks about it on the way to the farm. He knows he should’ve told Laura more, like:
The fact that Kate didn’t just idolize him, she wanted to be a superhero and came from the type of money where someone could have paid off Fury to help her become an Avenger if she really wanted to.
The fact that Yelena was actually Natasha’s sister, a sister that Clint had no idea existed until he was staring down a barrel of a gun wondering why the standoff he was caught in felt so familiar and so aching.
The fact that he didn’t really mean to pick up a one-eyed yellow lab but when he’d asked Kate what she planned to do with the dog she’d randomly adopted if she came to Iowa for Christmas, Kate looked confused and admitted she just thought she could bring him along because didn’t everyone and their brother love dogs? Especially little kids?
So that’s how Clint had found himself extending an invite to the girl who idolized him, the girl who wanted to kill him, and a dog. But the phone call to Laura had been short because he’d been rushing to make his flight as it was, using the girls’ bathroom break before boarding to alert his wife of both his arrival and his surprise guests.
Plus, he really doesn’t know how to even approach the “Natasha has a sister” situation because he still feels like he’s figuring it out. A week running around chasing criminals and almost getting killed didn’t exactly lend itself to a heart-to-heart revelation about the most important person in both of their lives.
“So are we gonna get, like, a pop quiz or something?” Kate asks, popping a strawberry bubble in the backseat of the Uber once they’re more than halfway to the farm. She’s been mostly silent before now, which Clint considers a victory, and he sighs as he twists around in the front seat.
“Honestly, not much to quiz you on. Three kids, one wife: Laura, Cooper, Lila, Nathaniel. I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out who is who. Yes, they know about my avenging, yes, they were snapped, and only Laura knows about Ronin.”
“How come Natasha never told me she had another family?” Yelena pipes up, fixing him with a steely gaze. Clint narrows his eyes right back at her; blonde hair aside, sometimes if he imagines hard enough he can pretend he’s talking to a younger Natasha and it almost gives him comfort.
“How come Natasha never told me she had a family?” he counters, and Yelena glowers as she mumbles something that involves the word “dipshit” under her breath.
Between them, Lucky barks excitedly, Kate ruffles his soft fur and Clint makes a mental note to tip the driver extra at the end of the trip.
When they finally reach the farm, they pile out of the car in an almost comical way -- Kate and Yelena spilling out with Lucky behind them, Clint hauling bags and gear out of the trunk.
“Woah,” Kate says, her eyes growing wide as she stares up at the house. “This is way better than where I imagined an Avenger would live.”
“What did you imagine?” Clint asks, at the same time Yelena decides to add on her two cents with, “I can’t believe Natasha never told me she lived on a farm.”
“I can’t believe I’m taking both of you home,” Clint says as he drops the bags on the ground. “I must be crazy.”
“My sister was crazy,” Yelena offers, eyeing the house and the tire swing and the tractor sitting on the side of the dirt road. “But so am I.”
“I still can’t believe I know someone who was an Avenger. Who knew another Avenger,” Kate says, her voice dripping in awe. “Two Avengers. Two Avengers!”
Clint sighs and gestures towards the house, motioning for them to follow him up the porch steps.
“I hope you like casserole,” he says as he approaches the door. “Because Laura probably made a lot of it.”
He knocks once, more as a courtesy than anything else, before turning the knob easily.
“Honey? I’m home.”
3. KATE
Kate has to honestly pinch herself.
To be fair, she’d had to pinch herself a few times since Clint Barton — the Hawkeye — had cornered her in an alley and somewhat yelled at her for stealing his suit. (And, as Kate would later explain, she didn’t steal it, it was up for the taking as much as anything could be up for the taking given the situation.) But she couldn’t believe they were fighting together and high fiving together and being dangerous together and training together, and now he was taking her home to meet his family --
And, okay, maybe he was right. Maybe saying they were “partners” was a bit of a stretch but she’d basically saved his life at least once and that had to count for something, right?
“So, Kate.” Laura smiles at her warmly as Yelena and Clint usher Lucky around the house so he can acclimate. “Clint tells me you’re a pretty good archer.”
“Oh.” Kate suddenly has no idea how to respond. For all that she was good at talking herself out of things and boasting about her skills, Hawkeye’s wife complimenting her is sending her for a loop.
“Yeah. I’m, uh --”
“Are you daddy’s new friend?”
Kate looks down, her eyes meeting a brown-haired girl who is almost as tall as she is with inquisitive eyes. She looks both young and old at the same time, a feat that Kate would think was impressive if she didn’t know that she probably looks the same given how Clint has stared at her.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Are you his new partner?”
“Sure,” Kate answers, because why not. It’s not like it was a total lie, no matter what Clint said. The girl’s eyes narrow and her lips thin.
“No you’re not,” she declares before she walks away. Kate raises her eyebrows in both surprise and confusion, and Laura immediately offers Kate another tight smile.
“I’m sorry,” she apologizes. “Lila -- I’m not sure how much you know about Natasha, but she’s still a little sensitive about her.”
“Oh.” Kate pauses, thinking about what Clint had told her. He had been testy about the partner thing, but she figured it was because he didn’t really know her. She knew about Natasha, though -- everyone did. She knew about the Black Widow and that she had died, and that Clint and Natasha used to work together. But even when she talked about being partners with Clint, she never thought she’d actually replace her. She didn’t want to try to, either. Because that was silly. She could never replace the Black Widow.
“It’s okay,” she decides, tossing her hair. “Really. I mean...she’s right. Who am I, anyway?”
Laura gives her a look. “I don’t know,” she admits. “But Clint says you’re very talented and I usually believe anything my husband says. So I hope you stay around long enough for us to find out.”
“Hey, a home-cooked meal in an Avengers house?” Kate asks, raising her eyebrows. “I’ll stay as long as you guys want. I’ll even make coffee. I’m great at making coffee.”
“Try not to burn the house down,” Laura answers with a wink, “and you have a deal.”
4. YELENA
She wishes that Natasha had told her she had another family.
She hears Clint’s words from the car in her head as the thought crosses her mind, and, well. She supposes it does go both ways. Natasha hadn’t told them about Yelena, so Yelena had no idea about Clint. Granted, she had no idea that someone would come to her and ask her to kill Clint, in which case it would have been pretty damn helpful to know the history behind his relationship with her Natasha.
Still, it’s weird. She wasn’t sure how she felt about coming to the farm but she hadn’t wanted to turn down Clint’s offer of meeting her sister’s second family and she had nowhere to really go for the holidays except back to Melina and Alexei. So she’d agreed to come, mostly because Kate was coming too and as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she’d taken a bit of a liking to the sassy, bold girl who reminded her of herself in a lot of ways.
“You okay?”
Yelena turns around to see Clint standing behind her and nods slowly.
“Yeah. Just, like...it’s fucking weird, you know?” She gestures to the living room. “She had this whole other life for so long and I just didn’t know.”
“Like I said, takes one to know one,” Clint answers wisely, sitting down on the couch. Yelena notices he’s moving slowly, most likely harboring still-lingering injuries from their time in New York that he hasn’t bothered to clue them in on or complain about. She turns her gaze back to the walls of photographs that line the room: pictures of Clint and his children, of Laura posing with her family, and one small photo of Natasha and Clint together at a picnic with a tiny child in front of them.
“Did she ever think about stopping?” Yelena asks after a moment. “Not being an Avenger? Retiring, like your old ass did?”
Clint laughs shortly and Yelena sees him wince out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t know,” he admits. “We talked about it sometimes -- mostly because I was the one who needed to think about it, you know? I mean, when you have a family, when you have fucking stakes…” He trails off. “I thought about stopping a lot, even though I knew I couldn’t. And she wouldn’t have let me anyway, because she’d know I was trying to take the easy way out.” He pauses, as if he’s trying to be careful about what he says next. “I think she would’ve wanted to at some point. I mean, as the two people on this team who never had any stupid powers...it gets to you.”
Yelena swallows and nods. “I always thought Natasha was invincible,” she says with a small shrug. “She was my big sister, you know? She protected me. And then she was a cool Avenger with other cool kids.”
“We were only kind of cool,” Clint offers, and Yelena smiles slightly.
“I always forgot she was human,” she continues. “We were made to be things in the Red Room -- but that’s all we were. Things, with specific skill sets that we thought made us greater than the entire world.”
Clint arches his neck back, looking pained, and Yelena thinks it might not be from his injuries.
“Look, I’ll tell you something, Yelena -- I’ve felt way out of my pay grade with these guys a lot over the years. I don’t know if she ever did, because she always hid her feelings better. But no matter how useless you feel, how much you compare yourself...I swear to god, nothing will ever make you feel more powerless than standing at the edge of a goddamn cliff in the middle of outer space and knowing that no superpower can save you from making a really shitty sacrifice.”
Yelena follows Clint’s gaze to where a small glowing orange stone sits on a small shelf high out of reach. She hadn’t noticed it before and she wonders if that was the intent -- to have some memorial exist, but one that was shrouded in secrecy and intimacy, just like Natasha always kept herself guarded.
“I”m sorry I tried to kill you,” Yelena says when she finds her voice.
“Well.” Clint lets out a long breath in response, and Yelena thinks his eyes look a little lighter. “You’re not the first one.”
5. NATASHA
She’d rather be anywhere but here. She’d rather be anywhere than in a beat-up smelly truck with the window down and pop music blaring full blast from the speakers, Clint sipping hours-old coffee next to her.
And she’d told him as much.
“But you still said you’d come,” Clint says when she opens her mouth to complain for what she knows is the fifth time in at least two hours. “So either you lied to me because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings, or you’re putting up a front and don’t want to admit it.”
“You know exactly which one it is,” Natasha replies, even though she’s not sure herself and doesn’t want to be called out on the fact that he probably has enough sense at this point to know it’s the latter. Just because Clint had broken down most of her walls, just because she’d given him permission to start to unlock the deepest and most private parts of her, that didn’t mean he just got to assume he could read her like the back of his hand.
“Hmmm,” Clint intones, bringing the coffee cup back to his mouth, one hand easily steering the car down the road. Natasha sighs loudly.
“I fail to see how your wife is going to go for any of this.”
“Go for what?”
“This,” Natasha says, motioning to the car. “Bringing home someone she’s never met. Letting them stay in your house, wear your clothes, eat your food...what?” she asks in frustration when Clint’s lips start to rise.
“Trust me,” he says ominously. “She’ll be fine. Laura’s Laura, you know?”
“I don’t know,” Natasha snaps testily. “We’ve never met, unless you count me looking at a picture.”
Clint rolls his head to the side and purses his lips. “She’s...she gets it,” he says a little lamely. “And anyway, it’s not the first time I’ve done this.”
Natasha raises an eyebrow. “I’m flattered you’ve courted other women before me,” she replies sarcastically. Clint snorts under his breath.
“Not sure I’d call it courted as much as I can’t help myself from getting involved in other people’s shit because I’m too good of a person,” he answers, and the response is matter-of-fact but also dripping with sarcasm and self-deprecation, what Natasha realizes as his own walls coming up to hid a defensive rebuttal.
She sighs, turning her head to the side and resting it against the window.
“I don’t know what kind of person you are, Barton. But I’ll never be able to figure you out.”
“Takes one to know one,” Clint says with a small shrug, and she swears he winks out of the corner of his eye. Before she can make another dig in return, he exhales loudly, as if he’s just experienced something that’s put his entire mind and body at ease.
Natasha soon sees what that is.
“Home sweet home,” he says as a large farmhouse with a sloping roof comes into view. Natasha stares at the farm, trying to temper the feeling in her stomach, the one flip-flopping between excitement and terror.
“For you.”
“And one day, for you,” he says, shifting to look at her with gentle eyes as he turns off the radio, as if he needs the silence to make his point clear.
“That’s a promise.”
+1. CLINT
After Thanos snapped his fingers -- after the terrible realization of what had happened, the confirmation of what they never wanted to admit, the crying and the anxiety attacks that took place in a locked bathroom away from anyone else who could see her walls break -- there was never any doubt in her mind where she would go.
There was also never any doubt in her mind what she would find.
When she reaches the farm, she almost wants to turn around. In all the years she’s been coming to Clint’s home, it’s never been quiet. Subdued, yes. Calm, sometimes -- especially if she catches everyone on a good day. But even when things were subdued and calm, there was always an unmistakable sense of homeliness, a comfort and warmth that Natasha craved and loved about the well-worn porch and sunken in couches and dirty tire swings.
And now, it’s quiet. It’s quiet in a way that’s eerie and sad, as if someone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s a markedly different quiet than just being removed from the nearest town or neighbors and Natasha climbs the steps slowly. She opens the door quietly, her senses on guard, just in case -- she knew Clint hadn’t been snapped, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t waiting with a gun for someone to make an attack.
“I should’ve known you’d come.”
Natasha steps through the door more fully, casting her gaze around the empty and dark house. Her eyes flit towards the kitchen, in the direction of where his voice has come from.
“I wouldn't be a good partner if I didn’t.”
He looks terrible is her first thought. His eyes are red-rimmed around the edges, almost as red as the first clutching the bottle of whiskey, and his beard is growing in fast. His hair is unkempt, his eyes are bright, and she realizes with an ache that she hasn’t seen him in at least two months. As she looks around the farm, noting new artwork tacked to the fridge and even newer curtains on the windows, she wonders how much her selfishness has cost her.
“Then have a seat. Stay awhile.”
Natasha glances at the open chair, the one usually reserved for Laura, and shakes her head. “No. I’m taking you home, Clint.”
“I am home.”
“Your other home.”
He looks up, squinting slightly, and Natasha can’t tell if he’s struggling to concentrate because of his drinking or because he’s genuinely exhausted.
“I’m under house arrest.”
“I think you and I both know that’s no longer a thing,” she says gently, moving towards him and putting a hand on his shoulder. His body tenses up, and she keeps her hand steady on his skin even as he gets up and turns around to face her.
“You don’t get it,” he says shortly, wiping a hand across his mouth. Natasha nods back almost immediately.
“I do,” she says, because she does. She completely understands the feral anger and frustration and sadness coursing through him, the absolute anguish of trying to understand why something happened to him and only him. She understands the question rolling through his head over and over again, the one that asked why of all people he had to endure it, and the pain of knowing he needed to go release it by making someone else pay for his hurt.
It had been her, once. Sometimes, she thinks it still is.
“Fine,” Clint answers. “Then you get it. But I need to go.”
“Then go,” Natasha answers levelly. “If you want to take some revenge tour, Clint...I’m not going to stop you. But first, you’re coming with me. I’m taking you home.”
She emphasizes the last word and he finally looks at her, really looks at her, his face slackening with defeat as if maybe she understands why she’s asking and why she needs him to obey. He looks around the farm, as if he’s suddenly comprehending the same quiet and eeriness Natasha had noticed.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because someone once did it for me,” Natasha says, not letting go of his hand. “And I know someone would do it for someone else in a second.” She puts her free hand on his arm, a soft and secure assurance of something real.
“And it’s about time I repaid the favor.”