Chapter Text
Clint wasn’t a stranger to loss. His life was practically filled to the brim with death and spaces left empty by the people they were made for. And so, he’d grown used to dealing with loss at a young age, he’d had to. Having no choice made it easier to get used to something, he supposed.
Phil had called it ‘true neutral fashion’ the way he buried emotions and hardships deep within himself, but why change something that wasn’t broken? Or, at least worked. That was the way he’d done it since he could walk, since he could form thoughts and realised he’d never have a normal family.
But of course, that could never last forever.
Clint only learnt of Phil’s death after the battle's conclusion. Covered in blood, sweat, and alien guts and a stomach full of shawarma, he knew the moment Nat and Steve entered the room that something was wrong. He had a feeling, of course, throughout the battle - the subtle pinch of discomfort that everyone seemed to focus towards him when they thought he couldn't see. He’d just assumed it was because of Loki’s mind control. But he knew being told to sit down by two people with solemn faces was never a good sign.
He didn’t remember much of what happened after Natasha told him Phil was dead. It felt like the world had shuddered, his ears filling with static, and then all of a sudden he snapped back into reality. It took him a while to recognise Natasha’s apartment, but it did little to quell his confusion once he did. Sitting slowly from where he was laying on the couch, he glanced around for any sign of Nat. When he saw no sign, he took note of himself - his clothes had changed; his battle-dirited suit was replaced with a pair of shield sweats and the purple hoodie he kept in his locker for emergencies. He also noticed a pair of Nat’s fluffy socks on his feet when he detangled himself from the blanket that was thrown over him, which brought a small smile to his face.
“You with me, daragój?” Natasha asked, leaning against the wall as she squeezed her shower-damp hair with a towel.
“Didn’t know I left.” It wasn’t fully the truth and they both knew it.
Natasha hummed in recognition as she walked towards the couch, eventually coming to sit next to Clint before responding.
“Gave the Captain quite a scare,” she turned to face him, “not sure he got the best first impression of you if I'm being honest.”
“You don’t say.”
-
It wasn’t uncommon for people in their line of work to work through loss and trauma alone, squared away in one of their shield-provided boxy apartments, but this time was different. The moment Clint attempted to leave, Natasha put her foot down and refused to let him, saying all he was going to do was ‘drink himself into unconsciousness until he forgot about Phil and Loki’. He vehemently disagreed even though she was completely correct, but he stood no chance - once Natasha Romanoff set her mind to something it was as good as done.
-
Over the next few days Clint barely slept, too afraid of the blue haze that crept across his vision every time he closed his eyes. He couldn’t risk losing control ever again. He could tell Natasha was worried about him, she was making no effort to hide it from him - that was a privilege coming from her, as very few people were effortlessly privy to her inner workings, but Clint couldn’t bring himself to be grateful. Not only was he having to tiptoe around himself, he was having to try and hide the worst of it from right underneath Nat’s nose.
A SHIELD mission coming through for Nat almost a week after the battle of New York was Clint’s saving grace. Her leaving was a rushed affair - no doubt due to SHIELD still reeling from Coulson’s… well - which left Natasha much less time to guilt Clint into looking after himself than she probably would have liked. The man watched the red head disappear in the back of a SHIELD vehicle, her attention too distracted to spare Clint more than a second glance before the pair could no longer see each other.
Finally alone, Clint numbly closed Nat’s apartment door and stood, taking a moment to adapt to the sudden stillness around him. Never having been inside the apartment without Natasha, he felt unease settle in his gut. It wasn’t fear, moreso a strange emptiness he couldn’t quite decipher.
He swiped a hand over his face, annoyed at his wandering, fragmented thoughts, but quickly brought his face back into the light when he saw the first few tendrils of blue crawling in. He couldn’t he thought, not without Nat here to spot him.
In an attempt to distract himself, he made his way towards the guest room that Nat had bundled him into, picking up one of Natasha’s blankets that was strewn haphazardly on the back of the couch on his way. He relished the way the soft fabric between his fingers pulled him from his thoughts, and the fact that it was bright purple and had golden dogs prancing around and striking funny poses on it made everything about it ten times better.
With Nat now officially gone, and not scheduled back for another two weeks, Clint knew his chance to leave was here. Packing his stuff was a short affair seeing as the only possessions he had with him were a few changes of clothes that Nat had had the foresight to retrieve at the start of the week.
Less than half an hour after Natasha left, Clint closed her door behind him with a sigh. The city was busy, and Clint groaned as he looked down at his watch where the numbers 17:09 glared back up at him. He had no choice but to accept his fate and join the rush hour traffic as he climbed in a taxi, cursing the fact that his and Nat’s apartments were simply too far for him to walk on his still-injured ankle.
The ride was quiet for the first while, Clint simply sat and swayed back and forth with the flow of the traffic around him. It wasn’t until they were ten minutes from his apartment when the driver spoke.
“Hey, do I know you?” Clint caught his eyes in the rear view mirror.
“No.” His voice was curt and clear and pissed off in a way he hoped the man picked up, but, as Clint’s luck had it in for him, the man barely batted an eye.
“No, I totally recognise you.” Clint was contemplating his gun from the waistband of his pants, but he wasn’t sure if Fury would find the same humour in it that Phil would have. “You’re off the TV, I swear you are.”
Clint grumbled under his breath and turned his head further away from the man’s prying eyes.
“Oh no way! I’ve got it, you’re one of those avenging guys right! With the bow - hawk- hawkguy? Yeah, you totally are!”
Clint was so over this conversation and it had hardly even begun. “You’ve got the wrong guy, man -”
The sight of blue lights flashing in his peripheral vision froze his entire body, and he heard his voice die off as his lungs constricted within his chest. There’s no way this was happening. This can’t be happening. His eyes are open. The rational voice in the back of his mind recognised the sirens and the intermittent red flashes that accompanied the blue, he knew it was the cops, but the rest of his panicked mind blocked all sense of rationality.
He could feel his fight or flight reflexes kicking in, and before the driver could utter another word, Clint was stumbling from the back of the car, flattening himself up against the cool black metal to avoid a car that swerved out of the way. The blue was getting stronger. He barely thought before he began dashing across lanes of traffic - he knew his way to his apartment from where he was, and once he was there he could use any one of his weapons to kill Loki once and for all. Why hadn’t he had his bow on him?. There was no time to dwell as he slid himself over the hood of an oncoming car, ignoring the honks and shouts directed at him.
Once he got across the street, he ran. Not caring who or what he barged through, the indignant screams of other pedestrians barely registered in his disorientated mind. But even as he ran, the blue never left. Its tendrils were dancing across sides of buildings, reflecting off windows and the shine of passing cars and the deep black’s of people's pupils. But he refused to stop. He refused to let that deranged son of a bitch take him again. He wouldn’t allow him to get close enough to use the weird voo-doo magic that caused him to stop fighting before his mind was infiltrated. Never again.
But the blue was still getting brighter. Still getting closer. Still closing in on him even as his apartment building came into view. The sirens were getting louder too, filling the air with disorientating noise, and that couldn’t be good, could it? Sirens were never a good thing, not once in Clint’s life had sirens been good.
Clint flung himself into the lobby of his apartment building at the same time that the blue light practically encompassed his vision, nearly taking the door off its hinges. Never once closing his eyes, Clint took the stairs four at a time until he reached his door.
The moment he was inside, he broke. Tears quickly sprung into his eyes and began leaving trails down his face, quickly dampening his shirt as sobs wracked his body with so much force it felt like he was going to split in half. He didn’t remember much after that, until he came to sometime after the sun had set, still feeling completely vulnerable. Like he had shrunk in the dryer and now everything was too big and loud and overwhelming.
He wished he wasn’t alone.
Why did Tasha have to leave?
The feeling of his bladder losing control after a particularly powerful sob was his final straw.
He broke.