Chapter Text
It starts with a thunder-like rumble somewhere far away. Laura doesn't give it much thought that sunny afternoon with not a cloud in sight, as she's focused on bowls and plates being placed in front of each seat, the tidiness of their picnic table in usual disarray.
Nate's laughter after catching a ball isn't there like a second before, and shuffling of Cooper's shoes on the grass disappears as well.
She shakes her head, raising it to call out again. The field from where she stands up to the house is empty, her sons aren't there, neither is her husband and daughter doing their archery practice.
Laura looks around, calling for her boys. She turns her head from side to side, trying to get a view of every corner of the farm.
She picks up the pace treading through the grassy field, their dinner forgotten behind her. A dust is carried on the gust of wind blowing past her, and Laura wraps arms around herself in the shiver.
She yells, her voice cracking when she reaches the house without stumbling on anyone. Laura storms into the house, more silence answers her. It’s unsettling inside, and she can't stand the only sound being her own voice.
Laura runs back into their backyard, her heart pumps and her moves become frantic. She comes to a stop by the tree, then scrambles to take the phone out of her pocket. Laura turns, and shifts, and searches for a soul somewhere, anywhere.
*
They fought and lost, Natasha explains. Laura tries to wrap her mind around the implications, and the burden of emotions heavy even for the black widow.
There was a fight, some stones and the alien warlord, and now there are people missing everywhere.
But Natasha tells her that they will fix it, whatever it takes, and Laura believes in that promise, as she believes in the determination ringing between the disbelief and shock in Natasha’s voice during their hasty phone calls.
Laura stays on the farm and waits, like she’s used to. Inside the house, the dead silence creeps in on her senses, while the outside keeps her alert with every noise resounding across the fields, carried from the world around her turning to chaos.
There’re looters wandering the countryside. FBI haunts her with interrogations and searches, as if making sure Clint is really gone and not ran away, and it tears and reopens that wound that she pretends she doesn’t have, like she could hide the thought of the worst to come and forget about it.
Three weeks pass till the quinjet lands in her backyard. Natasha comes with no call prior, she’s in the tactical uniform, tired and shaken. They stop a few feet apart and look at each other, and Laura knows that the faith she was holding is unrealized.
*
There's a fresh mug of tea placed on the table, the steam visible in a few stray sunrays sneaking in between the closed curtains. Laura curls on the living room sofa, pillow clenched to her chest and resting under her chin, her eyes barely open in dim light.
Birds chirping their songs can be heard from the outside, the weather of this late summer remains sunny and warm, and it's nauseating to Laura.
In the kitchen, there're sounds of bowls and cutlery ringing. Laura stirs to go there and tell Natasha to not make an effort at cooking, but lies back as the pain shoots across her lower back. Old injuries acting up don't like this position either, but Laura doesn't move to ease it.
Aches and illness give her moments of forgetful bliss, but then it all comes back to her in force, and she would see this pointless routine to cease instead.
But Natasha is here, mourning the loss of friends and a sister she’s only recently reunited with. Natasha, who ignores the world needing saving and comes here, to wrestle a gun out Laura’s shaking, booze-influenced hands. Natasha’s here, and Laura tries to hold on to that thought.
*
Why them?
Laura shivers at the autumn wind passing by her. Arms crossed, wrapping her cardigan sweater tighter to herself, Laura pays attention to the golden leaves swirling in delicate dance on the porch, more than to the person sitting on the bench with her.
She isn’t rude, not to Mr Miller, an elderly guy and their… her closest neighbour. Laura zones out once the pep talks start.
“Now more than ever, we need to stay strong for those who are left,” the man whose wife turned to dust in front of him speaks to Laura hoping to convince himself first. “We have to be here, for them, I see that now.”
I don’t
“Have your kids answered the call?”
Mr Miller nods, tears coming to his eyes from building-up happiness. “Yes, they answered. We’re good, I think. Jake said I should come, they have this big house, and he said I shouldn’t be here alone.”
“You should go, sir,” Laura tries to sound lighter, her face smoothing the frown for a second, but she can’t get herself to face him. Her gaze is locked on the barn and a broken window in need of fixing.
*
Laura finds a few mismatched planks in the junkyard that is the barn. They’re roughly the size she needs for this ugly reminder of the intruder from a few nights prior, and the chosen method of covering the hole won’t let her forget about it either.
“There’s always room for you at the compound,” Laura hears Natasha’s voice echoing in her mind. “And I’d feel better knowing you are safe.”
Laura cringes at the memory of her reaction to this offer, her shrug and disinterest at the kindness being given to her.
“It’s my home, I have nothing left but this.”
Laura shakes her head in the arrival of a dull migraine, and takes a moment to breathe. Her head hanging low, Laura notices the small amounts of blood still present on the barn wall.
*
“What does the weapon know about being a parent?” Clint had said, a lifetime ago to her. Laura remembers his young face smirking at her, and his laughing eyes, but behind his jokes there always was this deep-seated worry, a silent terror for the future to come. He’d brought up this question once, but in her memory of him, Laura can imagine him asking it over again, every day she’d known him for.
Laura recalls the sappy answer she’d given him, too. “The weapons will figure it out, together.”
They’d laughed, poked and pushed each other around playfully, and then came a kiss. Squeezed into a tiny alcove inside SHIELD base, a blind spot for surveillance cameras, at the time they’d still hoped they could have kept their relationship secret from Director Fury’s all-seeing eye.
I’m no weapon , Laura concludes, her gaze staring back at her from the mirror is disappointed, but at peace with that statement.
She used to be one, in the prime of her short career, in the peak of her body performance and younger days when everything seemed much easier. If she’s the weapon, she’s that fancy pocket knife from the times of college camping trips. Once sharp, useful and the coolest thing to have around, now dull and gathering dust somewhere in the attic, and no one went camping in two decades.
*
The house is the exhibit, a piece of history to be preserved and not forgotten. Laura passes its rooms quickly, only with purpose and never longer than she needs to. Moving anything, changing its placement, would ruin the illusion of chance for the inhabitants to come back.
A shabby, old couch cluttering the basement for years is enough for her. Laura finds her new start there, and it feels like the first real decision in months, but it doesn’t work for long.
She doesn’t belong to the world left upstairs, and the basement and acres of land around never feel far enough from the memory of the pointless loss of life which took place here.
In the short clarity from a good night’s sleep, Laura knows she must leave, undeserving of the home she failed to protect.
“I hope we’ll see each other again,” Mr Miller smiles, shaking her hand on the day of his departure from Iowa.
Laura nods, absent-minded. “I’m sure we will.”
*
At that moment, time blends into something indistinguishable, the blurry mess she is no longer in control of. Heart beating wildly and blood pumping in her ears, Laura lets the adrenaline haze take over and take her out of the grim reality.
Laura looks over the scene. Three bodies scattered across the alley. She turns to the girl she’s saved from becoming a victim to the assailants’ latest vile misconduct. Laura steps closer with a hand reaching out, but the girl cries out louder at the sight of the woman covered in blood, yells for Laura to get away from her, then runs.
Clint wouldn’t have brought himself so low. The man she knew and had seen grow, the man who tried his hardest to be a better father than the one he’d got, who fought against impossible odds because it was the right thing to do, he would despise her.
It’s the lifetime of hiding that had made her so weak, fragile, unworthy to face cosmic threats and their consequences. Laura's made her choice, and this weapon destroys years of caring for others and building a loving home, because she doesn’t know what else to do.
But she’s going to be bloody useful if she has nothing to live for, and there’s no shortage of people making this world already consumed by chaos even worse.
Laura feels nothing, wants to forget and remember no other life than this, and for a short, adrenaline-driven moment of her next fight, all feels right in the world.