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"So."
His hands were shoved in his pockets. She could feel the uncomfortable silence between them, used to it, but not ever happy with it.
"I guess I'll see you," Kate began. "Soon. Ya. I'll see you soon."
A familiar memory of being cast off the first time entered her mind unwelcome. Of a phone number for “emergencies” that she definitely didn’t bother obeying the rules of, and the same awkward tension that plagued them now.
“We’re probably not seeing each other again. You know that.” It wasn’t a question. She didn’t take it as one.
This man was a hero. Her hero. And in retirement or not, shouldn’t he recognize that? Acknowledge it at all? He was the one who had kids run past him for the bigger and better superheroes, didn’t he want at least a little bit of fame? A girl that saw him years ago had made him an idol, and he didn’t want to see her through to success.
“I know.”
Clint nodded his head, once, then again after turning behind him and checking for something. Was he always so on edge like that?
“Bye, Kate.”
A lump gathered in her throat but she swallowed it. This wasn’t supposed to be emotional. If he wanted to leave and act like they never met, then she could too.
She looked towards her feet. “Bye.” And when she looked up, he was around the corner once again, memories of his visit already sifting through her head like the memories of her father did, fond, questioning, and grieving.
She started in the other direction, a workday on Christmas Eve waiting.
========
She couldn’t do this. Not now, not when the events of her own recent discoveries were still fresh, not when she was still trying to make amends with her mother, not when she had a stepfather to worry about. She couldn’t.
She thought she’d be okay.
Everything would go back to normal (even if parts of her still begged to be the vigilante that appeared briefly on the news), and Kate Bishop would just be the daughter of a wealthy woman.
Just herself.
Once again, she was just herself.
The door to her new and sparsely moved-into apartment slammed shut, and she dropped her bag onto the sofa. The one she’d actually found on the side of the road, and since her mother still hadn’t given her access to her credit cards again, she was perfectly content with the grey couch that smelled suspiciously like cheap beer.
Her head was in her hands in a mere moment, and vision blurred by tears she begged not to fall. This wasn’t like her, it never had been, because crying over her mommy issues wasn’t something she did. She fought back and refused to give in.
But she didn’t want to go back with her mother. She couldn’t.
Kate knew that woman was all she had left of her family, but family or not she couldn’t stand to be around a man that lied and cheated and acted like he cared.
And her mother of all people looked at him with love.
She was pretty sure she was going to be sick.
But as she lifted her head up, her gaze settled on something across the room. A bow. Her bow. With the quiver hung on the coat rack behind her where it’s mate should have been, but was placed on her countertop.
She crossed the room in two strides. This wasn’t right. Someone was in her apartment, someone had recognized her, she thought it was all over but apparently not because there had been a person in her apartment before she had been. Her heart beat through her chest and the only thoughts on her mind were danger . For herself, for her family, for the privacy she had worked hard to secure-
You’re not the only one who can pick a lock , the note read in scribbled handwriting on a yellow notepad. Merry Christmas, kid.
And there, her bow laid out underneath the fluorescent yellow light of her kitchen, was C. Barton written in the same scribbled handwriting as the note. So this time when tears threatened to fall they weren’t because of bad thoughts.
In the silence of her apartment, alone but not really, just maybe did Kate Bishop cry over the man that had finally proven himself to be more than a retired hero.