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“You’re moping again,” Kate Bishop stated, breaking the heavy silence in the room. She had been observing her fellow Hawkeye over the rim of her coffee mug for some time now and what she saw was rather worrying.
“I’m reading,” Clint Barton replied, adjusting the newspaper in his hand but not sparing her a glance.
“You’ve been reading that same page for twenty minutes,” she pointed out, complete with actual pointing.
He raised the paper to hide his face. “I read slow,” he stated flatly from behind it.
Narrowing her eyes, Kate looked around for something within reach that she could throw at him. “Half of it is pictures,” she said, settling on a partial roll of tape which she lobbed right over the paper to strike him on the top of his head. Clint lowered the newspaper, a none-too-happy scowl on his face.
“I read really slow,” he said, voice low and dangerous, an obvious warning not to push the subject. A warning that Kate didn’t miss, but chose to ignore. Like he would ever follow it up with anything more than glaring at her.
“Alright, then what’s it about?” she asked, raising an eyebrow quizzically. Seeing that he was about to take a peek, she quickly stopped him. “Nuh uh! Without looking.”
And there was the glaring, not that it did him any good. She just kept looking back at him with that challenging look, just daring him to prove her wrong. Damn it. “Something bad,” was the best Clint could come up with, and seeing her roll her eyes he deflated, knowing this conversation was not going to be easily avoided, nor was it going to be any fun, at least not for him.
“It’s always something bad, it’s the news! Come on, Clint. You mope around a lot, but these past few days have been worse than ever. What’s the deal?” If he listened closely enough he might note that there was a hint of concern in her voice underneath all the irritation, but he wasn’t listening closely because he didn’t want to hear it any more than he wanted to talk about what was going on, which was not at all.
“There is no deal. I’m not moping,” he tried to brush it off.
“Did someone die?”
“No,”
“Did you lose a lot of money?”
“No.”
“Is it about a girl?”
“...no.”
Kate grinned triumphantly. “You hesitated! It is so about a girl!”
“Is not,” Clint protested, internally kicking himself for his slip up. The last thing he wanted to do now, or ever, was get into a discussion about his terrible love life with Kate. She wouldn’t pull any punches, she would be brutally honest, and he just couldn’t handle that right now. He knew how bad this was, he knew nothing could come of these stupid feelings now, so it was better to just keep them to himself instead of complicating everything even more.
“If this is about Jessica, it was you who-”
“This has nothing to do with that!” he quickly cut her off. “It’s… official Avengers business.”
Kate rolled her eyes at this awful excuse. “Oh don’t give me that! I’m an Avenger too.”
“I meant S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Clint quickly covered... very poorly.
If she would have had something else handy to throw at him that wasn’t her coffee she would have thrown that too. He was just lucky she liked her mug. “You’re a terrible liar, why do you even bother trying?”
“Hey, I can lie if I want to,” he sniffed in an offended manner, but she was having none of that. This was not going to turn into another “No you can’t/Yes I can.” argument.
“No, you can’t.” She left no room for protesting this time. “Now tell me.”
Kate was getting a little ticked off now, he could see it in her eyes and the way she held her mouth. He was either going to have to fess up or walk out real soon, and the latter just sounded like too much effort at the moment. Of course Clint wouldn’t admit that maybe there was a part of him that wanted to talk about it with someone, even if he couldn’t really get specific. “Okay, look. I’m just… worried about a friend, alright? “
She raised a questioning eyebrow. “A girlfriend? Or is this one of those I have this friend stories?” she asked, making air quotes.
“No, it’s about a friend,” Clint emphasized the word, rolling his eyes.
“And does he mope around and wear a lot of purple?” Kate asked with faux innocence.
“No, she...” he clarified, annoyed, but when he saw her face light up like Christmas he realized the trap he had fallen into. Aww, man, how did she always manage to do that? He sighed in defeat. “Do you wanna hear this or not?”
Kate zipped her lips and made a silent motion for him to continue.
“I have a friend who has just been through this really bad experience. Her mind was messed with and we don’t know if we can fix it all yet.” It was pretty vague, but Clint hoped it was enough to keep her from pursuing details behind his back, as she had want to do.
“Was she turned evil?” Kate asked, because of course she couldn’t let it go without at least a few questions.
“No. Well… okay, they fixed most of it, but she’s still missing some memories.” He was being a bit wary now, not wanting to say too much because this wasn’t his story to tell. If Natasha didn’t want anyone to know about the brainwashing incident then he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell anyone.
Picking up on his discomfort, Kate had only one last question, one that pertained more to him than to the friend he spoke of. “Memories of you?”
Clint didn’t like to even think of that possibility. He really felt bad for Bucky because he knew what it was like to lose Natasha; she wasn’t a woman to get over easy, if ever. To lose her love was one thing, though; to lose her completely would be almost unbearable. “Nah, memories of…” the man she actually loves… “someone else.”
As silence fell over them, Kate finally accepted Clint’s need to mope a bit. It was clear he wasn’t telling her everything, not just the obvious details of what had happened, but why it was affecting him so deeply, but she was pretty sure she could make a decent guess at that last one. Getting to her feet, she patted his arm softly as she passed by. “Alright, you’ve got two more days. If you’re still brooding after that I won’t be letting you off this easy.” Leaving her coffee on the counter she left him to his solitude.
Sighing loudly, he tossed the paper aside and patted his knee. Lucky jumped up and padded over, tail wagging, and sat himself at Clint’s feet, head resting on his owner’s leg. “She wasn’t kidding, you know,” the archer said, scratching the dog’s ear. “Guess I better suck it up, huh?” He had to get past this. Of course he worried about Natasha, and he wished he could do more to help her, but he also knew she would be fine. She was the strongest person he knew; she would get through this and try to find a way to prevent it from ever happening again. She was already so strong and something like this wouldn’t break her, it would only make her even stronger. She would get through this just fine; Bucky, though… Clint wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t help but feel bad for the guy, but at the same time he couldn’t deny that his actions deserved a good, solid punch in the nose. It wasn’t that the entire thing had been because of him, though it had, but expecting the rest of them to lie to Natasha for him, to keep her memories from her because he was feeling guilty and sorry for himself? Hell no.
Not that Clint was any stranger to guilt. As bad as he felt for Bucky, he still couldn’t help but feel grateful that Natasha hadn’t forgotten him. They had a lot of history together, they had helped shape the people they had each become, and to lose that… well, maybe it was selfish but he would have been right by her side, trying to help her remember from the start had it been him.
Of course that wasn’t the only thing he felt guilty for, but the difference was that his guilt, his omission, wouldn’t hurt anyone. In fact, keeping it to himself would probably prevent people from getting hurt, especially him. It was time to let go. The past was the past and sometimes you can just never go back, he had to accept that. They were just friends, that’s the way it was.
No, that wasn’t true. They would never be ‘just friends’, because that seemed to belittle the strength of what they had. He had been so crazy about her in the beginning, so madly in love he couldn’t think straight, but somehow now that they were apart they were closer than ever. They made an awesome team and even better friends and he wasn’t going to screw that up for anything.
They were friends, best friends, and that was more than enough.