Work Text:
The first time an Avenger dies, it hits the team like a bullet train against the side of a tent. And the feeling never seems to go away.
There should be a public funeral, there should be medals of valor, there should be a statue and there should be a hundred speeches from people who knew her or people she saved. But this is the Black Widow, and she's never wanted that. In death, the least her friends owe her is privacy. Secrecy. Mystery. The way she lived her life.
But the fact remains that she was an Avenger, and Earth must know when its heroes fall, and she'd been missing and off the radar for nearly three months before then, so Steve Rogers is scheduled to release an official statement on her passing tomorrow morning, with Tony Stark confirming this at a press conference later in the week.
And Clint Barton? Clint's the lucky bastard left to handle a more personal matter. After all, he was the only Avenger who had ever known Natasha was married.
This is just like her, Clint thinks as he sits in traffic. Elusive and mysterious her whole life, then she goes out with a bang and leaves a behind a pretty little Easter egg she's been hiding the whole time. And since I'm the only one who ever had an inkling, I have to go deal with it under everybody's noses now that she's not around. Nice, Barton-- you're a best friend in a million.
If Natasha weren't legally dead, he thinks, finally hitting the gas when the red light turns green, I'd tell her she owes me.
But Clint sighs, recalls every single time she'd saved his life in the hopes of paying him back for sparing hers, and decides to call it even.
"All right, Tasha," he mutters, kneading the wheel in anticipation. "It's about fucking time I met this guy, anyway."
The 'next of kin' form was found in Natasha's personal hard drive-- the recent stuff that hasn't made it to any SHIELD databases. The hard drive itself had been retrieved by Clint from Natasha's personal locker at Avengers tower, as had always been their pre-discussed arrangement should one of them fall in the line of duty. Yet in spite of all that secrecy, the information on the form seems almost absurdly normal and ordinary to Clint: Matthew Murdock, lawyer, thirty-three years old, married to Natasha Romanoff for just a little over three and a half years. It's more than he's known since ever she told him; heck, prior to her death, he never even knew the guy's full name. Just that Natasha was married to a guy called Matt. Period.
The address listed is somewhere in Hell's Kitchen, the location is a dingy and gloomy residential building, and when Clint finds the right unit and knocks on the door it's opened by a well-built man wearing a pair of dark red tinted glasses.
Sunglasses indoors. What a douchebag. This is the guy Natasha married?
Okay, to be fair, he was a pretty good-looking fella.
Stop it, Clint.
"Mr. Murdock?" Clint says anyway. "My name is Clint Barton." He lowers his voice. "I'm here to talk to you about your wife."
For a second the man's broad shoulders sag a little. "Clint Barton," he repeats, and he's just barely able to hold back the anticipation and anxiety in his voice. But Clint sees it in him before he can hear it, this man's body almost bowing from the weight of, well, waiting, and worrying, and praying. Lots of praying, Clint's almost sure of it. "You're Natasha's partner. Have you found her? Is she okay? Did she--"
His face goes slack.
He knows.
Clint takes a deep breath. "Mr. Murdock, there isn't any easy way to tell you this, and I don't know if she prepared you to expect this possibility, but Natasha Romanoff...was killed in action two days ago in the Pacific Islands." He swallows, hoping to get the rest of the words out before Mr. Murdock can properly react. "I was personally asked to inform you in the event of her death and I am truly, deeply sorry for your loss."
The words are canned, rehearsed, automatic, mechanical, not-Clint at all. He should say more. This man is his best friend's husband, for God's sake. He's a stranger, but he shouldn't be.
Again Mr. Murdock's shoulders sag. "So she's gone. I should have known." He leans against the doorframe like it's suddenly so hard to stay upright. "How did...how did you find me?"
"Through this," Clint says, pulling the hard drive out of his pocket and handing it to Mr. Murdock. The other man takes it in his hands, running his fingers along it gently as if to pick up Natasha's own finger prints with his. "This is Nat's personal hard drive. I have one, too. We made a pact so in case one of us was KIA, the other one would retrieve that person's hard drive and get access to their last wishes. A file with your name and address was on hers." At the same time, Clint's also noting the way he's touching the hard drive and looking straight in another direction (at him) without really examining the little black square and he thinks oh, my god, he's blind. He's blind and he's not a douchebag. (I am.)
Murdock folds the hard drive in his hands reverently, "You spies really think of everything."
"That was Natasha. Her secrets were important to her." Clint risks a smile, "you were the best kept one, sir."
"Call me Matt," Matt says softly. He takes a few steadying breaths; or he tries to, at least. "How did she-- how did she die? I have to know," he says, when Clint hesitates. "Please. You owe me that."
Now this part, Clint is somewhat prepared for. When I go, you have to tell him how it happened, she'd told him when they first agreed on the pact. He'll want to know.
It's still hard, though, and Clint takes a deep breath before beginning. "After Natasha's history was revealed to the public, she became a target. We thought if she stuck to the Avengers, she'd be safe. That only worked for a little while before a Soviet agent tried to draw her out by recreating the assassinations she'd made in the past on innocent people." Clint pauses. He's not sure how prepared Matt is for this. "This agent was...she was trained the way Natasha was trained. In an offshoot of the Red Room. They were grooming her to be the next Black Widow and the agent, Yelena Belova, intended to eliminate the old one first. Natasha left to deal with it on her own. They chased each other across the globe until it came to a standstill in the Pacific. That was where I caught up with them." He checks the other man's face for any reaction, but Matt's eyes are unreadable behind his red glasses. "Both of them were down to knifeplay by the end. I took a chance and eliminated the other assassin from about five hundred yards, but by then Nat had already taken a hit to the chest. I couldn't save her." The words fall out of his mouth in a raw whisper. He remembers her shuddering still in his arms, the grip of her hand around his going from desperately tight to just, nothing. "I'm sorry."
Matt doesn't say anything, and the surroundings become so silent Clint's thinking his hearing aids have stopped working. Finally Matt looks up to face him, meeting his eyes even if he can't see them.
"Natasha was here three months ago, you know?" he says, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "Just before she disappeared. She said goodbye and cooked dinner and...she promised she'd be back."
"She cooked dinner?" Clint says, surprised, and just like that formality goes out the door in .05 seconds. "Wow. That's--" He doesn't finish the sentence, because cooking dinner isn't Natasha's thing and never has been, but apparently-- for him, for Matt--
"That's a surprise?" Matt ventures. He manages a smile. "I guess we get a lot of that sort of thing with Natasha, don't we?"
"Well, yeah, to be honest, I didn't even know your full name until I came here," says Clint bluntly. "Like I said. You were her best kept secret." He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "Um, there'll be an official statement tomorrow. Captain Rogers won't be disclosing all the details of what happened, but, uh, Nat always wanted you to know beforehand."
"And there'll be a funeral, I presume."
"Actually, no. Natasha didn't want that," Clint says. "Now I know why. She wouldn't want a ceremony that her own husband couldn't attend." He pauses, "But if you want to find her, she's buried next to Nick Fury at Arlington." Well, next to an empty grave with his name on it, that is.
Matt seems to understand. "So nobody else knows she's got this, uh, paramour husband."
Clint shakes his head, "Nope. Not a damn clue."
Matt nods. "And I'd like to keep it that way, Agent Barton."
"Call me Clint." His business should be over by now, but he can't help it. The words spill out before he can check himself. He finds that he likes Matt, and wants to tell him how much he meant to Natasha. "Look, um, I know I said there wasn't a lot I knew about you, but from the very little Nat risked to tell me, you sound like one great guy. I'm glad she had you."
"And I'm glad she had you, too," Matt says softly. "Thank you for taking care of my wife, Clint. Thank you for being there with her. At the end."
Now Clint nods, and silence falls again, and the two of them fill the space with mourning.
Matt's the first to speak. "Natasha told me you were deaf."
"Yeah." Clint pauses. "And I didn't know you were blind."
Matt shrugs, a little humoredly now. "Well, surprises, right?"
"Yeah." Clint puts his hands in his pockets. Time to wrap this up. "It was great to finally meet you, Matt."
Matt's leaning on the doorframe a little more upright now. He doesn't need the support as much, but it's there, so he's putting his weight against it. "It was great to finally meet you too."
They shake hands. And then, because they can, because Matt looks like he needs it and maybe Clint does too, because maybe they're trying to catch a trace or sillage of the woman they'd lost on each other, they hug.
Then Clint's turning around, leaving Matt all alone in his apartment.
Dammit. That ain't right. Nat would hate him for this.
He turns back around, a few feet away from the landing. "Matt?"
"Yes?" The other man stops just as he's closing the door.
"You should come over sometime, have dinner."
Matt's eyebrows furrow, "With the Avengers?"
"What? No," says Clint, and he backtracks. "With my family, I meant."
"You have a family?"
Clint nods. "A wife. Two kids, one on the way. If I'd been in Nat's position, she'd dig up my secret hard drive and go tell them what happened too." He pauses. "Laura, my wife, and the kids, they loved Nat and she loved them. They'll miss her. You shouldn't have to be alone in this, Matt."
Matt's listening to him talk about Laura and Cooper and Lila with this odd sort of wistful expression, like he's missing what he never had or could never have. He smiles. "I think I'd like that. Thank you."
"I guess I'll see you soon, then."
"See you."
***
There's an audio file on the hard drive.
Natasha was prepared for this. Relatively. So she leaves behind a little of her in this file, and Matt listens to her voice, to her telling him that she loves him and apologizing (as if this is her fault) over and over. And she thanks him, too. For everything he was to her and everything he'd done.
That night Matt gets into bed alone, like he normally does, but somehow tonight he feels even more alone than usual. He can't count on the possibility of being roused by a tapping on the window and the sound of a familiar heartbeat, and there are no more odds of him waking up next to warm, supple skin and soft curls tickling his neck. All of that is gone, leaving only a grey and empty certainty without any-- well, without any surprises.
He can't remember what it was like to not be married, even if he and Natasha didn't always live that way. But it's things like these that make him believe in an afterlife. Maybe then they'd be together.
Matt lights a candle. He says a prayer. He drifts off into dreams of her, and in those dreams he gets to say goodbye. That night, and the next couple of nights after, Matt learns to be alone again.
For a week, the Devil doesn't turn up in Hell's Kitchen.
***
Clint goes home for a while, to be with his family. The other Avengers understand. They let him go, thinking he wants to be on his own, thinking he will be alone, but that can't be farther from the truth. He's just lost his best friend, and he wants to hold on to the people he still has.
The kids cry and cry and ask so many questions that break Clint's heart to answer, but finally they go to sleep, and Laura and Clint stay up sharing a bottle of wine and talking about her, all the good stuff. And he tells her about the Widow's widower.
That night Clint gets into bed next to his wife, which he doesn't always get to do, but he's glad that he still can.
Epilogue
Autumn 2012
It was their first mission together after Loki's invasion, and Clint hoped that everything was going to go back to whatever qualified as normal for SHIELD agents. But Natasha came to him with unexpected news.
"Clint, don't laugh at me okay? I met someone on that mission in Hell's Kitchen a couple years ago and we've...kind of been seeing each other." She chewed her lip.
He stared, anticipating more. "And?"
"And," Natasha said, deliberately drawing it out, "we met up again recently and we...got married."
Silence.
Deafening silence. Clint should know what that sounds like.
This is huge.
"Don't laugh," Natasha said, and then, quickly, "and please don't tell anyone. I'm sorry for not telling you about this guy sooner, I know I should have, and maybe I did the wrong thing by getting attached, but I just--"
"Are you kidding?" Clint interrupted, a big grin on his face. "Nat, never mind that, this is great for you!" He grabs her shoulders.
She blinked. "I-- really?"
"Sure!" Beamed Clint. "You know, Laura and I-- that's all we ever wanted for you, you know? We kept talking about how great it would be for you to have somebody and now it happened! I'm so happy-- mazel tov," he added, planting a kiss on her forehead.
Natasha winced. "Um, thanks." Then she grew serious, "So this is okay?"
"It's more than okay." Clint clapped her on the shoulder. "It's brilliant. What's this guy's name, anyway?"
A smile had crept into her face, as if just thinking about him already made her happy. Definitely a good sign.
"Matt," said Natasha. "His name is Matt."
Summer 2015
Matt does come for dinner, like Clint asked. Clint picks him up at his apartment and they take a long drive interstate and Laura cooks her chicken pastel and Matt fucking loves it. The kids are a bit intimidated by him, long cane and strong build and red glasses, but he's kind to them and makes them laugh and they end up liking him. They all do.
So he comes round again and again, hitching a ride with Clint when gets the chance to come home, and Uncle Matt fills in (not completely, but well enough) for Auntie Nat.
Clint sees, almost at once, why Natasha loved him, why he'd be the type of guy to love her, and they joke about being her 'eyes' and her 'ears', and Laura jokes about naming their next kid Nathaniel Matthew. Matt just grins that cute, flattered little grin of his and doesn't object.
He tells them how they met-- while Natasha was undercover in the Kitchen tracking the Maggia, and a young lawyer with a highly developed sense of hearing just so happened to find out her secret.
He tells them how he and Nat got married. It had just been shortly after the battle of Manhattan, and they'd both been shaken by it (because, come on, aliens) but it had really put things in perspective, and they both agreed that if life ever got that crazy again, at least they'd have some semblance of normalcy to hold on to. So they did it quietly, in his office, presided over by a priest friend of his, with Matt acting as the only witness to his own union.
There are things Matt hasn't told them yet, though. That stuff can wait.
But Clint's got some suspicions. Word is there's a vigilante running around down in Hell's Kitchen, and the more he learns about Matt, the more he watches him move, the more he can't help but think. After all, there'd always been a little bit of hero in Natasha, and maybe that part of her's still alive in her husband. Maybe, just maybe.
Matt's coming over tonight. Clint might just ask him.