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Ash wakes up to some sniffing noises coming out of the kitchen, rubbing her eyes as dreamy mist dissipates from her mind.
Her silk bonnet — that Bobbi always insists Ash to use — is left forgotten in her pillow when she leaves the room following the sound.
“Pops? Is everything okay? I heard crying…” Ash yawns.
Clint hurrys to clean the tears at the sides of his eyes as soon as Ash steps into the kitchen.“It was nothing, squirt. Everything is fine”
“Were you crying?” her brown eyes now look at her dad worried.
“Im fine, kiddo.”
“You’re lying! I hate when you lie.” Clint laughed sweetly, she was mad, but her big cheeks and her little face couldn't make her look anything but cute. “I saw you crying! What happened?”
Clint gave her a gentle peck in her forehead. “I had a dream, that’s all. Nothing to worry about, kid.”
“A bad dream?”
For a moment, Ash can hear the sounds of cars passing outside, as the people begin their day.
“No, not a nightmare… It was a good dream, actually.”
“Why were you crying then?” Clint, again, doesn’t reply at first, his eyes don’t look at her anymore, but instead at the pancakes with blueberries — that Ash loves so much — cooking in the frying pan, keeping his head down. “Was it about the Avengers?”
Bullseye, Clint damns how intelligent and perceptive Ash is. She surely learned that from Bobbi, he thinks.
“How did you guess?” Tries to joke, ignoring the blurry sight of his eyes at the tear's threats.
“You always talk about them…”
Clint serves the pancakes in Ash’s favorite dish. And as he walks Ash to the table, he answers: “They… they were my first family, no matter how many years past I’ll always think about them.” And I never really told them how much they meant to me before it was too late.
Ash sits in her chair, watching orange juice being poured in the glass alongside the dish with the pancakes. “But now you have Bobbi and me, right?” she says before giving a big chomp to her pancakes, eating eagerly. If Bobbi was there, she would remember Ash to eat slowly.
And if Ash was older, she would have noticed all the clues, all the early warnings, like Clint’s hollow smile and empty sweetness in his tone.
“Yeah, I do.”
Looking back, she wouldn't have been surprised when she woke up a week later and she didn’t find Clint in the kitchen, doing her breakfast as every morning. Bobbi’s pancakes aren't the same.