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“I’m always honest.”
If he’d said that to her yesterday it would feel like a dig at her integrity, a reminder that the list of people in her inner circle that she still doesn’t trust enough to let in on all of her secrets includes him. But it’s not yesterday, and he’s just carried her unconscious form from underneath a collapsing building, and she’s indebted to him in a way she’s only ever been indebted to one other person.
She doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that the circle of people who would risk their life to save hers has extended to two. It’s not that others don’t care, that people like Fury and Hill and Coulson wouldn’t waste their breath on her. It’s that to SHIELD, anyone is expendable in extreme enough circumstances. She’d told Steve about compartmentalization, and it had been true enough. She’s always known that if she were ever compromised in the field in a way that would threaten to bring down their entire organization, SHIELD would cut their losses and move on.
But Steve wouldn’t; Steve, who’s looking at her in a way that only Clint ever has, like she’s a person to him more than she’s ever been an asset.
How about a friend?
“Will you tell me about Odesa?”
She knows it’s not a coincidence, the fact that he’s asking about the mark the Winter Soldier left on her, knows that this is more than mere curiosity.
Coming on the heels of his honesty, she knows that she owes him this. And yet she also knows that if she says no, chooses not to divulge that information, he’ll respect her choice. It’s this knowledge, more than anything else, that makes her want to share a part of herself with him.
“You know there’s only one other person alive who knows that entire story.”
Steve glances pointedly at the small silver arrow at the base of her neck; her affiliation hidden in plain sight, a simple piece that means nothing to people who don’t know what they’re looking for. “Let me guess.”
“It was never supposed to be anything more than a routine solo mission,” she tells him, keeping her voice carefully neutral.
This is what she remembers: fire, gunshot, pain, blood, darkness.
Somehow, she makes it back to the safe house. She doesn’t remember getting there, but she knows she does it alone. She manages to make it across the cramped room to collapse on the couch, a trail of blood following her - snaking its way across the floor - a shock of vibrant red in the dim light of the apartment. The black, nothingness of unconsciousness threatens to choke her field of vision as the throbbing pain just above her hip eclipses all else, the white hot burn of the bullet that tore its way through her flesh as if she were made of paper. Her hand, when she reaches down, is met with a wet, sticky heat. Her blood glistening on her fingertips is the last thing she sees before the world goes black.
Before she even opens her eyes, she feels her entire body on fire.
As she focuses, honing in on the state of her body, forcing herself to blink her eyes open, she localizes the pain to three areas. A dry, rough burn at the back of her throat that she associates with thirst. The insistent pounding at the base of her skull that she knows means that she’s lost more blood than she cares to. And the searing pain at the base of her abdomen where the bullet had gone through her. Her fingers are still covered in blood, now dry and crusted, but when she reaches down to feel for her wound she’s met by a smoothness that it takes her a moment to place. She lifts her head in an attempt to see what it is that’s covering her wound, but the second she moves a nauseating wave of pain wracks her body and she drops her head back onto the couch in defeat.
“Fuck,” she exhales.
“Sounds about right,” comes the response from somewhere behind her.
If she hadn’t just lost about twenty percent of her blood she’d laugh. “How did you find me?” she manages, forcing the words through her raw, aching throat.
“You missed your check in.”
It’s not an answer, not exactly, but even in her semi-delirious state, she can hear the undertone of worry in his voice and she knows that it’s bad, maybe even worse than she realizes. Neither of them are strangers to blood and broken bones and patching each other up in dimly-lit safehouses, but she hasn’t heard him sound this scared since Budapest and so she knows this is something worse.
“How long…?”
“Three days,” he says quietly.
She takes a deep breath and regrets it instantly; the layer of dust that’s been at the back of her throat for days comes dislodged and she coughs violently – large, spastic movements shaking her entire body, her vision going black as her abdomen throbs with pain.
He’s at her side in an instant, one hand gripping hers tightly and the other on her cheek, gently turning her head towards him. “Natasha, hey, look at me. You’re okay. Breathe. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” It sounds like he’s reassuring himself as well as her, like he can make her be okay if he tells her that she is.
Slowly, she nods, the spasms subsiding into shallow, shuddering breaths as she keeps her eyes locked onto his.
“What do you need right now?” he asks her finally.
“Water,” she manages.
He nods once, briskly, the warmth of his hand leaving her face as he makes his way to the kitchen. She can hear the tap running only moments later and she lets her eyes drift shut, opening them only once she feels the pressure of his hand against hers once more.
“I think it’ll be easier if you sit up,” he tells her. “Here.” He slides an arm under her shoulders and lifts gently, pausing when he hears her sharp intake of breath.
“I’m fine,” she says through her teeth, wincing slightly as he helps her into somewhat of a seated position resting against his chest, his arms supporting her on either side. She can’t control the way that her hand shakes slightly as she accepts the glass of water and Clint’s hand covers hers once more, steadying her as she guides it to her lips. “I’m fine,” she repeats.
“Don’t…Nat, don’t do this.”
She doesn’t have the energy to argue with him so instead she exhales sharply as she says, “Thanks.”
“We should get you stateside. You need a transfusion. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to get a medical opinion on the patch job I did down there. I tried my best but it’s probably going to leave a pretty nasty scar.”
“What did SHIELD say?”
“Nothing yet.” He pauses. “I told them I’d get in touch when you were more…stable.”
“You thought I was going to die,” she realizes, quickly picking up on what he doesn’t say.
Clint exhales deeply. “Yeah.”
“Clint-”
“Don’t. Please, just…don’t.”
It’s all the permission she needs to ignore it, to do what they both do so well and sweep their emotions under the rug, pretend that they’ve never had any issues coming down from missions or watching each other bleed out in safe houses in foreign countries. It’s the permission she needs to ignore the fact that he was scared enough to chase her across the world because she missed her check in, that he’s willing to leave everything else behind – including the shit he’ll take from Fury and Coulson for it later – to come find her.
Because if she acknowledges it, she has to acknowledge that these aren’t the things that normal partners do.
So she almost takes his permission to ignore it, almost closes her eyes and lets herself draw comfort from the feeling of his arms around her.
Almost.
“I’m sorry.”
“God, Nat, you don’t have to apologize to me for…for…” he gestures helplessly. “It’s not like any of this is your fault, like you did this on purpose, like you could have done anything differently, it’s just…seeing you like that, bleeding out, dying, alone, it…it made me realize that I…”
“Clint,” she breathes.
“That I can’t lose you,” he finishes.
They’ve always known that, inevitably, they’ll lose each other. That any mission could be the last. And they’ve always carefully avoided discussing it, never saying goodbye before they leave on solo missions, never giving voice to the one thing that they both know all too well: that their mortality is finite, that luck runs out, that every time they speak could be the last. But it’s never been thrown into as sharp of relief as it is in this moment. She tries to imagine how she’d feel if it were him bleeding out, alone, halfway across the world, and it feels like another bullet to her gut.
“I should call Coulson,” Clint says finally.
Natasha nods in agreement, her eyes drifting shut of their own volition as she leans back against his chest.
He shifts against her gently as he pulls his phone out of his pocket.
“Barton,” comes their handler’s voice from the other end of the phone as Clint angles the speaker so that it’s between him and Natasha, “there better be a damn good reason that you’re not in Rio right now.”
“I’m in Odesa,” Clint replies.
It makes sense, in an abstract sort of way. In order for Clint to know that she’d missed her check in, Coulson would have had to have told him. And Coulson, of all people, understands the way that they go to the ends of the earth for each other.
A beat. Silence. And then, “Is she…?”
“Alive,” Clint responds. “But we’re not going to make it out of here alone.”
“Right,” Coulson answers quickly. “What do you need?”
“Ideally? Three pints of blood and a surgeon.”
“I can have an extraction team there in four hours.”
Clint lets out a long, slow breath. “We’ll make it.”
“Clint?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep yourselves safe.”
“Thanks, Phil.”
The line goes dead in response.
After that he talks just to keep her awake, gripping her hands forcefully when she lets her eyes drift shut for too long, holding her steady as he forces her to take careful sips of water. The rest is a blur of field medics showing up with a stretcher and a flight that passes in a haze and the only thing she remembers in sharp relief is the constant pressure of Clint’s hand in hers.
He’s still holding her hand when she blinks her eyes open to the sterile white of the SHIELD infirmary and a pair of eyes fixing her with a gaze equal parts relief and fury as he digs his nails into the calloused skin of her palm. “Do not ever do that to me again.”
Steve’s fingers brush over the silver arrow at the base of her neck, so softly that she’s not sure if she only imagined it. “Do you love him?”
“Did you?” Natasha responds. “Love him?”
“It’s…” he sighs, looking down at his hands.
“Complicated,” she finishes for him. “Yeah.”
“Do you know what that’s like? To lose someone, to mourn them, and then to get them back while they’re still lost?
She shivers involuntarily, remembering Clint looking at her with Loki’s eyes. “I can imagine.”
“You brought him back,” he says, like he’s reading her mind. “After Loki…you…”
“This is different, Steve.”
“Is it?”
Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?
There are parts of herself she’s kept hidden for so long that she doesn’t know how to share them anymore. They’re the things she told Clint over the years in bits and pieces, as she slowly chipped away at the walls of her defenses and learned to trust. Trust is a choice, Fury had told her. Trust is a gift, Clint had said later, when she’d recounted the words to him.
And it’s a gift Steve has given her, so she gives it back. He asked for a friend, after all.
“I spent years as a prisoner inside my own mind,” she begins quietly. “You watch yourself do things that you can’t control. You’re a machine, a weapon, existing to follow orders. And when you wake up it’s…it’s terrifying. It’s like coming up out of the water, desperate for air, and not remembering how to breathe.”
She doesn’t look up when she hears Steve’s sharp intake of breath because she doesn’t want to see the way he’s looking at her. “The first time I was able to make my own decisions I was…paralyzed. I didn’t know what to do. So I kept doing what I’d always known. Until-” she pauses, swallowing hard before continuing. “Until someone told me I could make different choices, better choices.” Her fingers reach up of their own volition, brushing against the cold metal at the base of her throat. “And so I did. Or, I thought I did. But it turns out I just went from being a prisoner in my own mind to a prisoner in someone else’s machine.” She looks up to meet his eyes for the first time. “So maybe we’re all just weapons, at the end of the day.”
“Do you really believe that?” His gaze holds sadness, but no pity, and she likes him better for it.
“Don’t you? That’s what they made you, isn’t it? A weapon.”
“I think we’re what we choose to be,” he says softly.
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“You would have made a good soldier, Romanoff.”
“You would have made a good spy.”
He smiles at that. “I thought you told me I was in the wrong business.”
She shrugs one shoulder absently. “Turns out maybe I was, too.”
“So who do you want me to be?”
It’s an echo of her earlier question, but there’s no hostility in it. He respects her agency, never asking for anything she’s not willing to give. And that’s what makes her want to give it to him.
She smiles as she looks up to meet his eyes once more. “How about a friend?”