The Avengers: Clint's Little Girl

"Easy!" Clint said, steadying her shoulders with both hands, then cupping her face in his palms. He stroked her cheeks, brushed her hair back from her eyes, made her feel centered in a way she couldn't explain—then, as if embarrassed of the intimacy, he pulled back slightly.

His puzzle ring was a bare glint as he reached down to her zipper and pulled it back up, gently closing her freshly bandaged chest wound inside the catsuit's confines. Engaged to be engaged... she couldn't remember where she was, but she could remember that...

The pain echoed, growing fainter with each repetition. Natasha couldn't keep up the stiffness, couldn't argue herself into taking pain over sleep. Tears laid siege to her—took her eyes, then her cheeks, then Clint's hands as he brushed them away. She felt the warmth of her own blood as it smeared on her face, mud and grit and grime.

He took the canteen, had her drink once more, then washed off his hands, her face, using and reusing a wadded up wet tissue until it was more stirring the dirtiness around then mopping it up. He threw it aside. Wouldn't bother with any further cleanliness. He was a dog, Natasha thought. A big friendly dog that couldn't help but love rolling around in the mud.

She released a shuddering sigh, a weak smile. Clint went to put the canteen back under the flow of water, but Natasha's mind was working too inefficiently to make the connection. She saw him turning away and thought he was leaving.

"Don't go," she said, her voice lighter than she remembered, smaller. She could've been gasping for breath.

"I'm not going anywhere," Clint told her, big and confident, his voice booming no matter how quiet it was. "And neither are you."

Natasha blinked her eyes, taking a long moment in the dark to find her center. Slipping, everything was slipping, nothing was solid. Soon the infection would really set in, then her fever would be up. Then things wouldn't be slipping because there'd be nothing to slip.

And she'd be defenseless. Except for Clint. She'd been trained never to rely on anyone, but how many times had he relied on her? Begrudgingly at first, with a mixture of macho arrogance and wary distrust, then with less and less reservation. He could do it so easily—let himself be helpless, admit need.

They all could. Everyone at SHIELD could rely on each other and trust in one another, in their own paranoid way, and then there was her, a wolf among wolves. Alone on both sides—slipping...

He brought her more water. Natasha sipped slowly, killing her thirst before she'd noticed it. She could rely on Clint. That was another part of Natasha, her trust in him. And if the yearning for whatever it was that felt warm in this darkness wasn't enough to overcome her innate divorce—her widowing—from all that was human, the fact that it was Clint coupled with that, built on that, and she could breathe. How long had it been since she could breathe?

"Don't go," she said again, as if she were just learning the words, memorizing them by stale repetition, no meaning in the syllables except their ordered arrangement. But the way Clint looked at her, like he understood, provoked a tight feeling within her, strangling, suffocating, but with heat blossoming in the middle of it.

He laid down beside her, moving so slowly she'd almost worry he was injured himself, so careful was he not to touch her, not to jostle her. He was laying on his side, to her left, facing her. He brought his right arm out from under his body, guiding it under her head, gently lifting her skull so he could ease his arm under it, crook the elbow so his hand came to her face. He held her chin and he stroked his thumb over it, his fingers through her tousled red hair, over and over.

She was wrapped in him—lying on him, being caressed by him, his body even pressing in on her from her left side like a shield. Natasha felt wetness in her eyes, compelling her to blink away the tears. Clint's left hand came over, fingers wiping them away, swabbing little riverbeds out of her dirty face. The fingers of his right hand cupped her chin, its thumb stroking her cheekbone.

"I'm staying right here," he said, his voice so low she felt it through his body more than she heard it. "Right here."

"I... выеть... I need a tissue."

She hadn't even realized her nose would get stuffed up from her crying jag... all she could hope was that Clint would assume it was from the pain... he reached into a pocket, brought out one of the tissues he'd been so stingy with, and actually held it to her nose instead of giving it to her. The feeling in her gut tightened, warmer and softer, but taut. She blew her nose and Clint wiped her nostrils and tossed the napkin away—they were being very inconsiderate houseguests of whoever owned this dilapidated shack. Natasha laughed at her own thought and tried to tell Clint, but it came out all Cyrillic. Clint shushed her.

"Shhh... later... just rest now. I'm right here. You can relax. You don't have to worry. Just close your eyes. Go on. Close them."

Natasha started to, but couldn't. She would look into Clint's eyes and see them beaming at her, warm and friendly and concerned, over her. He would get himself killed to save her, to protect her. She wished she could explain to him what a waste that would be, but she couldn't, and the knowledge that he wouldn't be dissuaded from protecting her by all the logic in the world, all the red in her ledger, made the feeling tighten into a fist.

It wasn't choking her. It was squeezing in on something inside her, some unshared sadness that extended through her from bone to pore, only this warmth was grinding it down, pulling it into one tiny ball. It had filled her up. Without it, she was empty, and something else was flowing in. Everything was flowing in, filling her up: her trust in Clint, her safety with him, a thousand sorrows and regrets that had been patiently waiting their time, and she weakly fiddled her hands and tried to pretend she wasn't just about bursting.

"You have to sleep," Clint said patiently. "We got your wounds all patched up. There's no need for you to be awake. You're tired and you might not get a chance to sleep later, so you might as well sleep now."

Natasha closed her eyes. She felt an odd sense of balance, all the strange new feelings crowding into each other, pushing on one another. And the most overpowering one was the simple tactile feeling of Clint's warmth pushing in on her coldness. She relaxed into that, trusted in that, and everything shouting for attention was very quiet.

"Close your eyes," Clint whispered—she thought the sound of the muscles of his jaw were louder than the volume at which he spoke. Almost teasingly, he laid the first two fingers of his left hand on her forehead and drew them down her nose in a swath, brushing her eyelashes gently, cajoling her to sleep.

Natasha shut her eyes and sighed contentedly. She hurt, there were a million thoughts crying out for her to think them, but Clint's lungs were pumping, his heart was beating. She could feel his pulse, his breath, pulling her into their slow, supple rhythm. His fingers stroked the locks of hair splayed over her sweaty face, distracting her demons for her. This felt familiar, but she couldn't remember it. And she remembered everything.

"Батя," she said, her pronunciation slurred and uncertain, as if her mother language was her second one. "Батя."

"Yeah, yeah," Clint agreed readily. "Lots of Батя."

Natasha grinned, glancing at his face one last time. He'd mangled the word, even by her almost inebriated standards. "Батя," she corrected him.

Her eyes closed again, this time for good. She felt... sleepy. Not tired, not worn out, but a simple calming and calming and calming that pressed the energy down all throughout her body. Not the usual cessation of consciousness, or the abrupt interruption of being knocked out. She could feel herself falling asleep.

"That's it," Clint said, and she could only hear him on the most subconscious of levels. Perhaps she was dreaming his speech. "That's it. Sleep. Sleep, little girl. You earned it."

"Ба... тя..." she said, her lips forming the word only out of newfound, addictive habit. It sounded good saying it. It sounded right. "Б..."

Her deep breaths were replaced with even deeper ones, her head turned to the side, face nuzzled slightly into Clint's bare arm. With his other hand, he pulled his jacket up over both of them, tucking it under his body and holding the other end down to trap as much warmth as possible.

***

With Nat asleep, Clint took his attention off her, scanning the surroundings for any sign of life. As tempting as Nat was making a nap look, there weren't exactly a lot of other volunteers for guard duty.

Nat made a slightly keening noise, and Clint turned back to her—it was almost as if she'd noticed his attention wander off her, even in her sleep. He put his hand to her hair and lightly massaged her temple, tried to straighten her hair back into some semblance of couture. He knew how she liked looking pretty.

Natasha moaned contentedly, turning her face deeper into his arm, nuzzling into it so hard he wondered how she wasn't waking herself up with friction on his arm hair.

Then she did something very strange...

Moving slowly, staggered, Nat drew one hand up her body. Clint almost could've taken it for a seductive gesture, only Nat seemed far too guileless at the moment for that. Of course, that was usually the idea with a seduction.

Then she brought her hand to her mouth—those perfect lips that could torture a man into talking by chewing on the end of a pencil—and stuck her thumb inside her mouth. There, she gritted her teeth lightly into the knuckle, clearly not hard enough to wake herself, and then her cheeks hollowed before quickly returning to normal.

It struck Clint as being oddly adorable, somehow.

He held Nat close, tight, watching over her as she sucked her thumb.

***

From there, Natasha's memory ran in fits and starts. She didn't remember Clint holding her, comforting her, so much as she remembered the safety of it. It had the lingering feeling of a dream upon waking. She remembered more the moments of separation from him: the evac, the doctors, times in the hospital room when she had to be so quiet and calm and just ask where he was instead of screaming. He'd gone to be debriefed; he didn't know how much she wanted him there.

But he knew something, which was more than most could claim. He came about after the debrief was finished and sat with her in intensive care, stubbornly seeming to meditate on her recovery, just pure concentrated concern over her that Natasha drank in like the sun after years in the shadows.

She stayed quiet, convalescent, centering herself while he watched over her. She supposed it was sadistic, letting him worry about her, gauging his anguish like it was some kind of test, but no one had ever accused her of being cruel or not being cruel. Just efficient.

This wasn't efficient. She had a longing that she could resist, but not shake. While the emotion wasn't overwhelming, the curiosity was. She actually missed being wounded, teetering on the brink of death, simply because it had excused so much. It'd let Clint hold her. It'd let her be held.

Apparently, the furious concentration under her eyelids had become too much for even Clint not to notice. "There she is."

Natasha took a page from his book: a short, noncommittal burst of communication. "Hey."

"Hey."

Natasha didn't try to move, but cast eyes down to her bandaged torso. "How bad is it?" She already knew—she was good at knowing how far her body had been pushed—but Clint would tell her of any complications, no bullshit.

"I think you're gonna miss the spring formal," he informed her gravely.

"And I already picked my dress out," Natasha pouted. She'd be grounded for months, recuperating, then recertifying herself—God help her, psych evals. This was why she didn't like getting shot. Even after they took the bullet out, it was still such a big deal with people.

"I'll be taking a couple of weeks' vacation time," Clint said. He shrugged. "Better that than breaking in a new partner. You're welcome at the apartment, if you can go without sponge baths."

Natasha smiled to herself. She had her own place, and appreciated the privacy of it. Some wounds she liked to suffer in silence with. But Clint always offered—sometimes she'd taken him up on it to pacify him. Guy seemed to get a kick out of reaching out to her, and since a lot of the time he was banged up worse than she was, she let him have it.

But here he was, with just a scratch, and the offer stood, and she felt herself smile and she felt herself nod. Just while she healed, rested up. The doctors would only release her if she was out of intensive care, so at any point, she could declare herself cured and go back to her own little safehouse.

She wondered if Clint had given it some clever name, like 'the Widow's Web'. Probably. She'd ask him, but it would hurt to laugh.

"Okay," Clint said, trying to act like her agreeing wasn't some big deal. "I'll tell Laura to make up the guest room." It was a walk-in closet neither of them used. Laura had the least shoes of any woman Natasha had ever known. No wonder he'd married her.

"You need to buy that farm already," Natasha told him.

"Fury needs to give me a raise."

"I agree to one sleepover at your place and you start believing in miracles..."

***

She felt vulnerable. She felt alone. And the last time she hadn't had been bleeding out on a battlefield.

She didn't know what was in her veins anymore. She missed him, she missed knowing that he could take her in her arms and hold her and no matter how bad she felt, that feeling would go away. Fear, pain, regret... she'd thought they were all so big, so omnipresent, but they could be dispelled. She just had to replace them with something.

Every hospital bed at SHIELD had a tablet built into it. No matter what Fury had said to get the budget for them, the main thing they were used for was the Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video links that came up as soon as she turned it on. But Natasha bypassed them, going into SHIELD's databases, looking up Clint's files.

She knew most of it, but she looked into his past mission reports anyway, from before they'd been paired. She knew most of that too, from the secretive osmosis of the intelligence community. Everything known, nothing proved. It was mildly enlightening to get the facts, or at least the officially unofficial facts, in black and white.

"Light reading?" Nick Fury asked. For a big black guy in a full leather coat, he could move quietly when he wanted to. "Guess I should've renewed some of our magazine subscriptions."

"They're not classified," Natasha replied, leaving unsaid that if they were, and she wanted the databases hacked, Fury wouldn't know about it the way he knew what she was using her tablet for.

"Still, you've never cared who you were partnered with before."

"I've never been partnered before."

"Yes, you have. For months now. Going on years."

Clint. "I've never been partnered this long before."

"So you want to get to know him?"

"I know him," Natasha said quietly, though she wasn't sure who she was assuring. She did know him... know everything there was to know about him... but like Tolkien's Hobbits, while that may have taken a single day, after years he could still surprise her. Had surprised her.

She wanted to explain him, an answer for a question she couldn't ask.

"You want to get to know him, I suggest talking to him." Nick stood up from the shadowy chair in the corner of the room that the doctors had to put there for dramatic staging like that. He came into the light. "When I hired you, I understood I was getting a war machine. No personal bullshit. You and Clint make a good team. I'd hate for someone to get their hands on a nuke because you two shelved your friendship bracelets."

"He's engaged," Natasha told him.

"He's a lot of things. So are you. I don't care about most of them, so much as I care about you stopping being a good agent." He straightened the lapels of his coat. "Something to learn from the movies. The woman who shows up trying to steal some other woman's man? She's usually the bad guy."

"What about the bald guy with the eyepatch?"

Fury's good eye widened. "Touché."

***

Clint's apartment had been used mainly for showering and sleeping, and holding whatever knick-knacks Clint had collected. Until he'd met Laura, he'd lived for the job as much as Natasha had. Now he was engaged and they were trying to work out a farm to buy—they'd always wanted to live in the country. Clint always being called away on missions had made escrow hard, but he was determined to settle it while he was on vacation.

Natasha should've resented that that was all that life had taken from him, when it had barely given anything to her, but she couldn't. She envied the apartment, even in its disarray, with Laura's things packed into boxes because they were just going to move again once the farm was settled and her old apartment had had the ceiling fall in. In the chaos, there was a warm pressure that pushed in on Natasha, soothed the ache she was just becoming aware of.

Laura had a huge hug for Clint, but she took mercy on Natasha, with her crutch supporting a limping leg and the continual low abrasion of bandages under loose clothes. She took Natasha's free hand and clasped it in both of hers, leaning in to kiss Natasha on the cheek, the pressure overwhelming, grinding into Natasha, crushing her a moment, then Laura stepped away with her just-right perfume and the light warmth of her touch and was once more almost that distant image Natasha had once thought of her as, just A Clint Thing, not someone under Natasha's skin.

"Look at me—I'm like a little girl excited because her best friend gets to stay over," Laura said, rubbing her arms. "I've got goosebumps! There's a room made up for you, we've got the TV if you want to watch something, you can order something off the On Demand..."

"She knows how a TV works, babe," Clint said gently.

"Of course you do!" Laura's eyes flicked nervously to Natasha, anxious, but smiling to override it. "Can I get you anything?"

"I just need to sit down," Natasha said, easing her crutch forward.

Laura gave it a wide berth. "Great! Well, there's dinner on the stove, which I should get back to, so don't get too comfortable, you are about to be well-fed!" She started to turn. "I mean, do get comfortable, you don't have to go to the kitchen right this minute—we don't have a dining room—I think I smell smoke."

She fled to the kitchen.

Natasha heaved the crutch forward again. "Please don't tell me I intimidate her, I don't think I can manage to be less threatening than this."

"She's just nervous about making a good impression." Clint shadowed her, ready to swoop out and catch her if she slipped. "She likes you a lot—maybe something to do with saving my life a bunch of times—she wants to be your BFF."

"The job's hers if she wants it," Natasha said cavalierly, finally managing to erect herself before the sofa. Transitioning from her rickety standing to a sit seemed suddenly daunting. She had managed it on the car ride over, but she'd had much more energy. The low-level pain, the sweeping transitions between languor and movement—it all sapped her strength, left her weak as a kitten at a moment's notice.

Clint's hand gently settled on her shoulder. "Little help?"

Natasha threw her head down, feeling a ridiculous urge to pout, to register some complaint with her wounded fatigue. "Please," she said instead, keeping all resentment of the situation out of her voice.

Clint's touch was unerringly gentle, nonsexual, almost businesslike but for the care he took. He steadied her, held her, lowered her slowly down to the couch. And it was all the more intimate for how she let herself be touched and he only touched her that much, his hands firm and steady, warm and soft. She felt the calluses of his bow fingers as they trailed off her flesh, leaving her sitting comfortably.