Work Text:
At eleven-thirty at night, the airport is busy but quiet. People walk by, rolling bags over the carpeted floor, tired creases on their face. Mothers try their best to rock sleepy children to sleep. PSA’s sound every now and then, warning about last calls for flights, advertising for the solitary pizza place that is still open this late, and explaining that fliers should never offer to watch bags for another person. A group of flight attendants disembark from a plane in the gate next to them and wish each other quiet Merry Christmases before going their separate ways. Outside planes take off and land, each one carrying people to their destinations for the holidays.
He would be tempted to tilt his head back against the wall and sleep (he definitely deserves it after the week he’s had), but he has a plane to catch soon and he refuses to miss it. He has a family to make it back to for Christmas, damn it, and it would be his luck if he fell asleep and missed it.
Besides, the spirited girl sitting in the seat next to him makes it a little hard to fall asleep. She’s talking his ear off about nonsense stuff, just like she’s been doing ever since he ripped Ronin’s mask off her face, only this time it doesn’t annoy him. Yeah, the kid is young and still a little naive and has a much higher view of him than he deserves and probably admires him a bit too much, but she’s a sweet girl at heart, and she’s grown up more in the past five days than she probably has in the past five years.
He tunes her out a little bit as talks animatedly, something that’s not exactly hard to do now with his hearing loss, but he tunes back in when she goes a little quiet, and says “thank you, by the way.”
He turns to look at her, huddled in the I Heart New York sweatshirt he’d bought her from one of the airport gift shops. It was ridiculously overpriced, and he didn’t really heart New York (nor, he thought, did New York heart them after the wreckage they’d poured over the city the past couple of days), but she had needed new clothes, and it had been the first comfortable thing he’d seen.
“Thank you for what?” he asks.
“For everything,” she says, waving her hands around. “For showing me what it’s like to be a superhero, for fighting with me, for signing my bow,” she grins at that. The bow in question is neatly packed away in her bag (getting that through security had been a pain), sporting the signature of Clint Barton along the upper limb. “For taking me home for Christmas,” she continues.
“Oh, well,” he says, slightly uncomfortable with the admiration, “I couldn’t really leave you alone. I don’t suppose putting your mother in prison and simultaneously getting disowned would make for a very good Christmas.”
“Yeah,” she says, rubbing her hands together, “it’s kind of unfortunate timing.” Unfortunate isn’t strong enough of a word to describe the situation. He had watched the sadness in Kate’s eyes when her mother had shouted out of the police car at her that she was welcome to leave and not come back. He knew that the relationship between mother and daughter had once been good, but had started to strain and fracture this week, and that Kate would be grieving the strife between her mother and her, now that the relationship had finally crumbled. He couldn’t very well just leave her sad and on the street for Christmas. When he had called Laura to explain that Kate probably had nowhere else to go for Christmas, at least nowhere else that would treat her like family, he could practically hear his wife’s grin through the phone as she said, “I’ll start washing the sheets in the guest bedroom.”
“Besides,” he adds, “my wife is going to love you.”
“Are you sure?” she asks nervously, “I don’t want to impose upon your Christmas.”
“Don’t worry, she’s used to me bringing home friends at unexpected times,” he says. Natasha. The Avengers. Wanda. Now Kate. His wife had jokingly asked him once if she should put new sheets on the bed in the guest bedroom everyday; he was bringing people home so often.
She raises her eyebrows and gives a little laugh, grinning. “So you’re saying we’re friends?” she asks, eyes sparkling mischievously.
His lips purse in a frown, as he pretends to glare at her. “Freudian slip.” They couldn’t be anything less than friends, after all they’ve been through in the past week, but of course he’s not going to tell her that.
“You know a Freudian slip is when you say something you’re truly thinking deep down, so really, you’re just proving my point.”
“Uh, uh, uh,” he shakes his finger at her. “Stop being a smart aleck. It’s too late for logic.”
She just laughs, ignoring his comment, and it reminds him of Lila, with her own sarcastic wit and total disregard for any of his rebuttals.
“Anyway,” he continues, voice more solemn now with sincerity, “you’re welcome. And you’re welcome to stay for longer, after Christmas, until you decide where to go next.”
She shakes her head in disbelief, and leans back in her chair, running a hand through her hair. “Wow! I’m going to spend Christmas with Hawkeye.” Her mouth hangs open in shock. She turns to him again. “You know, if someone had told me a week ago that I’d be going to your house and spending Christmas with you, I would have said they were crazy.”
If anyone had told me a week ago I would be bringing home another kid for Christmas, I would have said they were crazy he thinks, but he doesn’t say it.
“Well,” he says, “sometimes crazy things happen.”
She ignores his comment, continuing her rambling. “I can’t believe it. This is literally impossible. It’s insane. I’m actually spending Christmas with Hawkeye.” (He thinks of mentioning that this talking about him like he isn’t there like she’d done in her apartment when they’d first met drives him a little crazy, but he doesn’t. Some part of him is flattered that this girl idolizes him so much, even if the praise is somewhat misplaced.) “This is the greatest Christmas present I’ve ever gotten. And that’s topping the time my mom got me a bow.” She slumps back against the wall. “This is crazy. I mean, I know a lot about you, I’m not a stalker, I promise, you just have a lot on your Wikipedia page, but you don’t even know me that well. But you’re still inviting me home for Christmas. If there’s anything you want to know about me, by the way, you can ask. I’m an open book.”
He sighs, too tired to match her energy. “What would I want to ask you, Kate? After the week we’ve had, I feel like I know you pretty well.”
“I mean, yeah, you know me. But you don’t, like, know me, you know?” He shakes his head, but she continues in earnest. “You don’t know the little things. Like I know you started practicing with a bow when you were three, and that your favorite cereal is cheerios—which is boring by the way—and that you always sleep with your socks on, but you don’t really know any of those things about me—”
He puts a hand up to stop her. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, how did you know that ?”
“What?” she asks, looking genuinely confused. “That you sleep with your socks on?” She shrugs like it’s no big deal that she knows something creepy like that about him. Like she knows random facts about lots of famous people. “ It’s on your Wikipedia page.”
“You know anyone can edit those things, right?” he scoffs, even though it’s true. How has he not seen this before? It creeps him out that a personal fact like that is on such a widespread site like Wikipedia. What creep had been spying on him?
“It’s from an interview with Tony Stark. You can watch it. The link’s cited at the bottom of the article.”
Tony. Of course.
“I don’t really want to watch that.” He shakes his head.
She shrugs. “But anyway, if you have any questions, I’ll answer them.” She looks at him expectedly.
He thinks of not asking anything, and going back to staring aimlessly around the airport. But as he takes in the sight of her, watching him expectantly, he realizes she just wants to be known. She wants someone, him specifically, her hero (as she’s told him many times in no uncertain terms), to care about the little things in her life. Seeing as she seemed almost like an afterthought in her mom’s brain, he can’t really blame her. There are worse things than wanting to be seen by those you admire. “Oh, heck, I don’t know,” he shrugs, grasping for a question. “What’s your favorite animal?” It’s a stupid question, but it’s the first one that pops into his brain which is functioning at a less than stellar capacity this evening.
“Really,” she says, and he can’t really blame her, “ that’s your question?”
“Hey,” he says defensively, “you’re the one who wanted to play twenty questions at eleven at night, kid.”
“I know, but still,” she says. “That’s such a shallow question. You gotta ask a deep question. Something that tells you who I am as a person, you know, fundamentally.”
“A question as fundamental as whether you sleep with socks on or socks off?” he says deadpan.
She has the dignity to look a little sheepish at that. “Fine, I concede. Point taken.” After a beat, “Oysters.”
"What about oysters?" he asks.
“My favorite animal.” She nods at him like she can’t believe he doesn’t understand. “It’s oysters.”
He laughs loudly then, and a man in the seats across from them who is trying to sleep glares at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me? Oysters? Oysters? ” He laughs again. “You’re joking. There’s no way your favorite animal is actually oysters.”
“I’m not kidding. It’s like this, oysters are all gross on the outside and hard to crack open, but once you do you can find a beautiful pearl. It’s just like people. Some people can seem closed off and ugly from the outside, and they can be hard to get to know. But once you get to know them, you can find a beautiful person inside that you just had to open up. And like sometimes in life you have to go through hard things to find the beauty in the world.”
He stares at her with eyebrows raised. “Please tell me you’re not using oysters as a metaphor for life, kid.”
“But it’s symbolic.”
“Oysters are not symbolic. They’re slimy. And gross. And they smell bad.”
“Technically they only smell bad if they’ve gone bad,” she interjects.
“Whatever. The point is, smell or no smell, oysters are just oysters. There’s no hidden metaphor. But you know what is metaphorical? Clams. As in, you should clam up about any type of seafood.” When she looks at him slightly downcast, he concedes. “Ok, I guess that’s what I deserve after asking you what your favorite animal was when you wanted a philosophical question. Here, answer this: why do you want to be a superhero?”
She goes quiet, and for a minute, he wonders if he’s asked too sensitive of a question. But then she opens her mouth and begins to talk slowly.
“When the Chitauri attacked New York, I saw you. You were shooting a bunch of them out of the sky, and it was so cool. And then you fell, or jumped, or something, but you shot an arrow and you caught yourself. And it was the most amazing thing I ever saw. And I wanted to do that. But then my mom came and grabbed me, and we ran because there were these huge explosions. My father, he didn’t, um, he didn’t make it out. And at the funeral, all I could think was that I needed to protect my family. And I kept seeing you in my mind, and I thought ‘I want to be like him. I bet he can protect his family.’ And so I asked my mom for a bow and arrow. And she got me one.
“I trained for a long time. And I took martial arts classes, and fencing. I wanted to be like you. I needed to be like you. Because I was so,” her voice cracks then, and she looks away from him, “I was so terrified that they would come back. And that I wouldn’t be able to protect my mom. And being a superhero, it was a way of stopping that. Of preventing people from getting hurt. And it became this obsession. And you were a big part of it. Everything I did, I modeled after you. You were my hero because you protected people. And I wanted to do that. Not just protect my mom, but other people too, who couldn’t protect themselves. I wanted to be around like I wish someone had been around to protect my dad. I felt like I had failed him, and I need to do better. To protect others because I hadn’t been able to protect him”
Something stings inside of him. These thoughts are only too familiar to him. He’s still beating himself up about Nat’s death, replaying the moment in his head over and over, and it still hurts. And there’s still times that he can’t sleep and it’s three in the morning and he’s wishing it had been him, wishing he’d been strong enough to make the choice she did. Kate’s too young to feel that way, and he closes his eyes. His hands shake, the memory of Natasha and the regret boiling inside of him, alongside the anger that this twenty-two year old has to carry such a similar burden.
“And then part of it became this pride thing. I won medal after medal and trophy after trophy and it made my mom so proud of me. And I loved that. I loved that she could go to my archery tournaments, and say ‘that’s my daughter.’ I wanted to impress my mom, and I did. It made me feel like a good person. And I would think that one day I would become this great superhero, and everyone would love me, and that maybe that would fix whatever loneliness there was in my family.
“But more than any of that, I wanted to impress you. I looked up to you so much. You were my role model. I would pretend that I was your friend sometimes, and talk to you like you were sitting next to me in my bedroom.” She chuckles awkwardly, looking determinately at the floor. “Wow, that sounds way creepy now that I’m saying it out loud. But I just wanted to earn your favor. I wanted to be a superhero so I could meet you. So you could say ‘Good job, Kate.’ I wanted you to be proud of me.
“I know it’s stupid,” she rushes on, “but I—”
“Good job, Kate.”
Her head shoots up like a bullet. “Huh?” Her eyes are wide, and not for the first time, he is reminded that really, Kate is just a kid. Yeah, yeah, she’s a legal adult, and can vote and drink and crap. But come on, honestly, she’s just a kid with wide eyes and a broken heart who just happens to be good with a bow and have a black belt in martial arts. His heart breaks for this girl, who he can tell just wants to be loved and appreciated. And yeah, she may have made some stupid decisions like shooting down the bell tower, but she’s a kid. She’s allowed to make mistakes and grow and learn from her failures. She’s way too young to be carrying the heavy weight that she is holding. She shouldn’t have to be worried about protecting everyone, it’s not her job.
But she’s made it her job, and now all he can do is hold her up and try to teach her how to survive in it.
“I said good job, Kate.”
She blushes as red as the heart on her sweatshirt, and nervously brushes a piece of stray hair away from her face. “I. Wow. Um, thank you, you didn’t have to—”
“I know I didn’t have to,” he says. “But I wanted to. And I mean it, Kate, I really do. You’re one heck of a shot, and it was my honor to fight alongside you, even if you did make some really dumb decisions along the way. But most importantly,” he makes sure to look her in the eyes (hers are brimming with tears), “I am proud of you. Not just proud of how you shoot or how you handle yourself in a fight, I’m proud of who you are as a person. Because believe me, your character means a lot more to me than your ability to shoot the dangly-thing in the bell from far away. Though don’t get me wrong, that was sweet, even if it was illegal.”
She is silent for a moment, save for the quiet sound of restrained tears and hitched breaths, before she manages to choke out through a sob, “I don’t know what to say.” She covers her mouth with a sweatshirt-covered hand, and the first shiny tracks of tears fall down her face. The father in him awakens, and he gently reaches out an arm.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he says quietly, and when she doesn’t take the hint, “come here.”
She leans into him, head on his shoulder, nudged in between his collarbone and his neck, shaking and crying quietly. He wonders how long it has been since someone has told her they were proud of her, or if she has just been a quiet disappointment over and over.
“It’s alright,” he says quietly, rubbing a hand over her arm. “You did good.” He lets her cry on his shoulder for a while, the way he had when Lila had gone through her first breakup and Cooper had broken his arm right before he was slated to go to state for baseball. Across from him, the trying-to-sleep man shifts in his seat and glares at them again. Clint glares right back, and eventually the man drops his gaze and feigns looking in his bag for something.
Eventually she stops crying and wipes the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her face, but she doesn't pull away, simply readjusting her head on his shoulder. He lets her stay.
“You can’t protect everyone, you know. Even if you become the best archer in the world. Crap still happens. You’re not invincible, and that’s ok. You aren’t made to be invincible. Sometimes there’s someone you can’t save.” He’s speaking more to himself, than to her, but she doesn’t need to know that. Maybe the words can heal them both.
She sniffles. “Was there someone you couldn’t save?” she asks, quietly, in the way people speak when their lungs are clogged up after they cry.
Red hair bleeding into the remains of white. A cliff with a stone waiting at the bottom. A terrible, horrible, unchoosable choice, and yet a choice made. A cold hand letting go. Falling, falling, falling.
He can feel his throat closing up against the wave of emotion, but he manages to whisper, “yeah, there was.”
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
“Me too,” he whispers, pulling her a little closer.
This girl here, she feels like a second chance. He’s failed one girl who he had loved. Now here is another one, a little younger, more inexperienced. But she’s got the same spirit that Nat had, and that surely counts for something.
Silence descends upon them. Outside the window, their plane rolls up to the gate. It’ll be time to leave soon. He sighs. He’ll be home for Christmas, just like he promised (and with an extra kid in tow too).
Maybe, he thinks, looking down at Kate whose eyes keep drifting shut only to be pulled back open again by the girl, she can be more than a girl crashing at his house for a couple of weeks. There’s archery equipment in the barn, and he’s teaching Lila anyway. Might as well throw another kid into the mix. Maybe they can form some sort of mentor relationship.
He’s getting old, he can feel it in the way his bones ache and the bruises don’t go away as fast as they used to. It’s getting time to settle down, so his kids don’t have to worry if he’ll make it home for Christmas next year. He needs someone to take up the mantle. Kate seems like a good choice.
He’s spent the last week watching the naivety fade away from her as she realized what being a superhero truly meant. That it wasn’t trick arrows and cool explosions and jumping from skyscrapers, but she still has the heart for it, even after that. One day, after he’s trained her enough, she’ll be capable of taking up the mantle.
She’ll make him proud.
As they sit there, waiting, he gets the feeling that she may be spending a little bit more time on the Barton farm than they’d been expecting, but he’s okay with it in a way he wouldn’t have been a week ago. His wife will love having another girl around to love on and dress up, even if Kate leans more towards suits than dresses. Lila will enjoy the other female presence as well, and he can see in his mind the two of them ganging up on Cooper. He laughs quietly to himself. His eldest son will have his work cut out for him, defending himself from those two menaces.
Well, when he had flown to New York, he hadn’t expected to be bringing a fourth kid home, but he supposes there are worse things that could happen. And, in a weird sort of way, this feels right. Like something that was always supposed to happen.
He can imagine Nat up in the clouds watching him and laughing.
Good job, Barton, you adopted another one.
He guesses he has.
He’s not mad at it though.
On the wall, the hour hand on the clock falls into place on the twelve. Midnight. Which means it’s December 25th—Christmas.
Leaning against his shoulder, Kate sighs, eyes shutting and staying closed this time.
“Merry Christmas, Kate,” he whispers.
Even with his hearing aid turned all the way up, he barely hears her respond, but she does.
“Merry Christmas, Clint.”