Work Text:
we are the hollow men
we are the stuffed men
leaning together
It had, once upon a time, been New Mexico.
Scratch that.
Upon a times are for fairy tales, and this is not one of them. This is the heat and the thirst and the taste of grit and the sand in your boots.
From the beginning then.
It had once been New Mexico. Now it was a wasteland, and it was where Clint Barton found himself walking, one hand on the water canteen at his hip (two thirds gone and emptying fast) and the other gripping at the strap of a rifle slung across his shoulder.
He’d have preferred his bow, but he was long since out of arrows and had somehow managed to con some poor bastard into a trade. The choice had been one of practicality. Bows were not the sort of weapon that were particularly effective when the world had gone to this particular brand of hell.
Ammo was precious too, of course, and just as hard to come by as arrows might have been, but he was the once and always Hawkeye. His bullets always counted. Plus, the rifle’s butt made an excellent club at need. A growing need lately, hence his overall predilection for moving light, fast, and alone.
He carried only what he needed: water, gun, ammo, a little jerky, some dried fruit leather, and a worn photograph of what had been friends. What he could afford to lose he’d lost long ago.
In the distance – westwards, he knew, because the sun was falling fast -- he saw buildings. It was a city. Not a big one, but a city nonetheless. Cities meant people, which was not ideal. Common knowledge was that safety supposedly lay in numbers. Clint begged to differ, dismissing this ‘common knowledge’ as something like stupidity. Numbers were the problem. Enough people in one place and you had all kinds of chaos waiting to happen.
Stories of people getting assaulted for blankets, killed in their sleep for water, and occasionally worse were told all over the place by all kinds of people. While he didn’t take all the stories for gospel, he knew for a fact that they often weren’t far from the mark. The bigger the city the worse.
Clint blew out a breath. A city may have meant people, but also meant proper shelter.
He walked, because there really wasn’t anything else to do.
and voices are
in the wind’s singing
This city, whichever one it had been, was particularly run down. There were no clear signs or landmarks that Clint could see (and Hawkeye saw much), but it was a mid-sized city with tall, dilapidated skyscrapers, crumbling apartment buildings, and it would have to do.
After a prowl around the outskirts, he worked his way in to the city proper. There were a couple tent towns set up in what must once have been the downtown core. He’d avoid those for now. What he needed was one of those apartment buildings, preferably one with enough windows for clear sightlines out, but few enough that sightlines in would be difficult.
It took a good half hour or so and the dark had fallen completely, but he found it.
He murmured a thanks to whatever god was listening -- though given the circumstances, Clint wondered if any of them gave much of a shit anymore – and pushed through the door only to go collapse in a corner of the building’s foyer.
He set himself up for the night, pulling some of the jerky out of his side satchel. In doing so he noted his dwindling number of bullets. He was in a city though. There had to be someone in one of the tent towns who’d be willing to trade. He’d have to get some water too, he thought, chewing pensively.
He might not have any goods to trade, but he’d sold his services as bodyguard in exchange for goods before. He could easily do it again. Fear was everywhere, and a guy with a gun was some kind of security. Not Clint’s favourite method of going about it, but the work paid the proverbial bills.
That would have to wait though. He’d head deeper in to the city tomorrow to see what he could see. Right now he was in most need of some sleep. Old training kicked in and he curled up underneath his jacket with the intent of closing his eyes an hour and a half – a full sleep cycle. One and a half hours asleep, one awake, repeat until functional again. It was a pattern he’d survived on during missions, back before everything had changed. It was a pattern that had saved his ass numerous times since.
The night breeze picked up, and the howl of wind through open doors was the screwed up cousin of a lullaby. Drifting off to the sound of it was easy.
Suddenly, he heard light steps. Eerily light. The sort that people shouldn’t have been able to hear. Clint had figured out a long time ago he wasn’t people though, and his hand snaked out for his rifle. He kept his eyes closed for the time being, listening. The steps grew closer, and when they stopped, Clint bolted upright, training the rifle on the intruder.
Blinking, but not lowering his gun (training is hard to shake, and experience is a good teacher), he said one word. It came out cracked and dry from a throat that warranted the same description.
“Nat?”
lips that would kiss
form prayers to broken stone
Her hair was hacked short, and hidden under a gauzy scarf that also served to obscure some of her features, but it was undeniably her. The two pistols trained on him were also a pretty strong hint.
“Clint?” she asked.
They remained frozen in place for a moment, but soon lowered their weapons. Clint put his rifle down on the ground as Natasha jammed her pistols in to shoulder holsters she wore beneath a battered, but familiar leather jacket.
She pulled her scarf down so it sat wrapped around her neck. “I thought you were dead.”
“Well,” he said, gesturing broadly at himself and choosing not to state that he’d thought the same of her. “Apparently not.”
Clint sucked in a breath as he gave her a quick once over. It was still registering that Nat was standing right before him. He shouldn’t have been shocked; Natasha was a survivor above all other things. When the end had come though, when everyone had ended up broken and scattered and just generally screwed, he’d thought everyone was gone. Sure as hell had seemed like it. He’d been wandering all over the goddamn place looking for the others. At least, it had started that way. It ended up being simply wandering, purpose lost and existing kind of the only point.
She approached tentatively, stopping after a couple of steps. He understood. It was a combination of waiting for permission and wariness. He could hardly blame her. After everything that had happened, all trust anywhere had kind of gone out the window and the maxim about sleeping with one eye open wasn’t so much a maxim anymore as a desperately desired talent.
He got to his feet and closed the distance, grabbing her and pulling her in to him. It occurred to Clint in passing that he hadn’t had this much physical contact in a long time, but Natasha was pushing right back against him like any space between them would be a danger. He didn’t stop her.
What it was he murmured in to her ear he couldn’t say. What she’d said back he either didn’t register or quickly forgot. Didn’t matter.
It was her mouth he remembered.
Her lips were chapped, her tongue dry, but it was her mouth and it was her.
Coats and holsters were the first things to go. Last were his boxers.
Later, clothed and holstered again, they lay there looking at the ceiling.
“I’ll take first watch,” she said. It was a strange thing to hear, even if it was a phrase he had been long acquainted with. She’d always offered to take first watch, and there was a comfort to the familiarity of her words that went pretty damn well with the familiarity of her.
Grateful, he stretched out next to her, head ending up by her hip. She ran a hand through his hair as she sat up, and began to hum an easily recognizable tune: the itsy bitsy spider.
He snorted at this, but he also fell asleep.
of death’s twilight kingdom
the hope only
of empty men
When the sun broke and they were both awake, Natasha reached in to her backpack to withdraw a hardened loaf of bread. She broke a portion off and handed it to Clint before tearing a piece off for herself. They chewed in companionable silence for a while.
He then took a sip from his canteen. It was stale and lukewarm, but water was water. He offered it to Natasha, who took it with a nod of thanks before taking a quick pull.
Feeling a little better for the food and drink, he cracked his neck left, then right, and then leaned back to rest against the wall.
The two of them were silent all throughout. First, they were both busy listening; the city would be waking up soon, if not already, and people would be out scavenging or searching or simply spreading out since there was light to move by. Second, they didn’t need any preamble to the questions that needed to be asked.
“So what now?” she asked finally.
He shrugged. Wasn’t like he’d had much of a plan for a long time. He had no idea where he had been – was? – headed, and even Natasha showing up hadn’t cleared up much in that particular area.
“Hadn’t really been going anywhere,” he admitted.
Natasha pursed her lips, and it was her own admission of the same.
“So what now?” he asked in return. That was the question that mattered, and they both clearly knew it. Anything else would branch from there.
The question didn’t hang in the air. Nothing hung anymore. Things – words as much as objects – fell flat, and were either left on the ground or, if lucky, caught.
Natasha caught.
“We walk,” she said, somewhere between a question and resignation. She wrapped her scarf up back up around her head. “Nothing much else to do.”
“We walk,” he agreed.
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
not with a bang but a whimper