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Clint wakes up, gasping for air, and trying to free himself from the sweat soaked sheets he’s entangled himself in. He can’t get them off. He can’t get them off! By now, he knows they are just his sheets, but he has to get them off.
Next to him, a lamp is turned on. He recoils, forgetting for a moment the sheets which are tying him down to the bed.
“Clint,” Laura mumbles, pushing herself up to sitting. “What’s happening? What’s wrong?”
Her voice, still thick with sleep, hits him like a punch in the gut, and he starts crying without understanding why. Before he knows it, Laura is holding him, and he’s hugging her as if his life depends on it.
She whispers shooting words in his ear that he can’t make out, rocking him back and forth, as they do with the kids when they have nightmares. Clint’s pretty sure that hadn’t been a nightmare though. It had been far too real.
And Loki’s voice, reciting the names of his family, is still ringing in his ears.
It’s not even four in the afternoon, and Clint feels completely drained. It’s a struggle to keep the attention on the game he’s playing with Lila. He’s not sure she notices – she’s four, and as long as he reads the questions and rolls the dice when it’s his turn she’s more than happy to do the rest of the actions herself.
Cooper is watching TV in the same room, some cartoon Laura says he follows religiously, and Clint can’t tune out the annoying soundtracks. It crawls in under his skin, making everything itch. He wants to yell at Cooper to turn off the TV, or at least the sound, but he doesn’t.
He forgets that it’s his turn though, and he doesn’t realise that Lila rolls the dice for him. Again.
Laura slips her arms around his waist as he’s standing on the porch, watching the kids play. He puts his hand on top of hers.
“Talk to me,” she whispers against his shoulder. “Let me help.”
Clint shakes his head. He’s not ready to talk about how he killed SHIELD agents, how he tried to kill Natasha, how he has endangered his family... Just thinking about it makes his insides cold. He’s told Loki about Laura, about Lila and Cooper, and the farm, and the guilt almost brings him to his knees every time he remembers it. Not that he ever forgets it. He can’t tell Laura that, she’ll hate him for it. For putting their children’s life in the hands of a manic god.
He traces her hands with his fingers.
“It’ll be fine,” he murmurs. “Don’t worry.”
Working with the body helps. It’s hard for the mind to wander far when you’re building fences, or relaying a roof. It makes it easier to fall asleep too, when the body is hurting all over from manual labour. After tearing down the first wall inside the house, though, Laura had sent him out to the barn.
It’s fine, there is no TV with blustering cartoons in the barn.
He finds an old tractor out there to restore; he knows nothing about tractors from back when Cap was still trying to enlist, but it’s a project to dive into. He realises he’s running from his problems, but he doesn’t care.
It’s nice out in the barn.
It’d been the same dream again, the one where he tells Loki about his family. Only this time it had gone further. They had reached the house, and together, Loki and he had killed them all.
Clint sits in the bed, staring at the hands that in the dream had put arrows through his children’s bodies. He’s shaking, and no amount of Laura’s whispers or gentle touches can make it stop. He feels nauseous, it hits him in waves with every breath he takes.
The bedroom door opens. Both Clint and Laura turn around to see Cooper stand there in his Captain America pyjamas. Clint gags, turning away with a hand pressed over his mouth. He shuts his eyes, putting all he has into not throwing up. He hasn’t killed his children, he hasn’t killed his children, he hasn’t killed his children.
He hasn’t killed his children.
“What’s wrong with dad?” Cooper asks, and Laura slips out of bed.
“He had a bad dream,” Laura whispers. “That’s all.”
Clint swallows hard, and even though he doesn’t trust his stomach to cooperate, he turns around. Laura is crouched down next to Cooper, stroking his hair. Clint manages a smile.
“Daddy’s fine,” Clint says. “Don’t worry. I’m sorry I woke you, buddy.”
“But…” Cooper starts.
“Let your mom take you back to bed, okay?”
Cooper looks between them, but Laura ushers him out of the room before he says anything else. Clint curls up to a ball, hiding his face in his arms. This was not good.
He usually keeps the bow and arrows locked up in the arms locker in the back of the closet in the bedroom, but he can’t do that anymore. There’s no safer place to have them, the only person who can access them is him, but… he’s the one killing his children with that bow and those arrows over, and over, and over, every night.
He can’t keep them in the bedroom, but he doesn’t trust himself to take them out and to move them. Some part of him knows that it’s an irrational fear, but he can’t overcome it.
The best option is to tell Laura, to have her move them, but he doesn’t.
He doesn’t tell her anything, because he doesn’t want her to know. At least not more than he already suspects she does.
“DADDY!”
Clint looks up from the tractor, at Lila who’s standing in the door to the barn, her hands formed like a megaphone around her mouth.
“Don’t shout inside,” he says.
“You’re not listening!”
Clint blinks. Had she been standing there for long? Had she been calling him more than once? How did he missed that?
“Mom says it’s dinner,” Lila informs him. “And don’t forget to wash your hands.”
Clint smiles a crooked smile. “I won’t. Tell her I’ll be there soon.”
Lila nods and runs back to the house. Clint watches her go, feeling as if someone has poured a bucket of cold water over him.
Clint has a throbbing headache. It started behind his eyes some hours ago, but has slowly spread back towards his spine. Now it’s close to all consuming. He sits at the kitchen table, leaning against it with his head in his hands. He presses his palms against his eyes, it’s not helping, but it’s not making anything worse either.
From the living room he can hear the TV. The loud, jumping, bubbling noises which make him want to scream. Wordlessly, straight out in the air, until it all stops. All that exists seems to be the TV and the headache. That’s his whole life. There is no beginning, there is no end, there is only… this.
And behind his hands, behind his closed eyes, he can still see Natasha as he reaches out to strangle her. To kill her.
All to a cartoon soundtrack.
The kids leave the dinner table to watch TV in the other room. Laura waits for The Circle of Life to start playing before she reaches out and puts her hand on Clint’s.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve eaten less than Lila,” Laura says, eying his plate. “And she’s four.”
“And a half,” Clint corrects her, just as Lila would have. Laura smiles briefly. “I’m fine, I’m not hungry, that’s all.”
“You haven’t eaten for weeks.”
Clint looks down at his plate; it barely looks as if he's taken a bite of his dinner. Still, he isn’t hungry, and the thought of eating more is revolting. He rubs his face with the hand Laura isn’t holding.
“I think I should go to bed,” he mutters, getting up from the table. He stops, squeezing her hand lightly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what it— I’m sorry.”
“I love you,” Laura says, squeezing back.
He smiles. “I love you too.”
Clint startles awake.
Disoriented, he looks around the living room. It’s bright outside, he can hear the vacuum upstairs, and Coop and Lila playing in the yard. He looks at the time on the DVD-player – it was 3 p.m. He has no idea how long he’s been out, but his head feels heavy and all he wants to do is to go back to sleep. He forces himself up off the sofa, and stumbles into the kitchen.
This is the third time this week he’s fallen asleep in the middle of the afternoon. And if he wasn’t worried already, this would probably have done the trick. Perhaps some coffee would make him function as a human being again.
Not that he really believes that.
One morning Natasha sits at the kitchen table when Clint comes downstairs. She’s dressed in civilian clothes – unpractically tight black jeans, a red top, and a grey hoodie – but the sight of her makes his heart raise, and his mouth taste like iron. He doesn’t want to go back. He’s not ready, he can’t be trusted, though he sure as hell doesn’t want SHIELD to know that.
“Laura called,” says Natasha after looking him over. “She says you have trouble sleeping.”
Clint doesn’t know how to respond to that. He takes a step back. Every muscle in his body is tense, his hands curling into fist, and he stares at her. Natasha, whose secrets he betrayed. Natasha, who he tried to kill. Or he thinks so, at least. He isn’t sure what’s real and what’s not of the memories from Loki’s mind control, and Natasha had refused to tell him when he’d asked.
She shouldn’t be here.
“Yeah, well,” Clint says, managing to smile. “She worries too much. It’s fine.”
“Is it?”
He’s about to say yes, it is, when screaming, laughing, fighting children come running down the stairs. He snaps around, arms ready to divert an attack, before reality catches up with him and he leans against the doorpost instead. His children run past him, and from the corner of his eye he sees Natasha jump up and cheerfully greet them with hugs.
Laura comes down the stairs. He glares at her, mouthing: “I’m fine.”
She walks into the kitchen without a word, but she gives Natasha the biggest of smiles, and hugs her longer than both kids combined. Clint pretends he doesn’t notice that.
“You shouldn’t have called Nat.”
“Oh?”
Laura looks at him, almost condescending. They have tucked the kids to bed and put Natasha up in “her” room, and now they are preparing to go to bed themselves.
“You make her worry for nothing,” he says. “Dragging her out here for no reason; she has more important things to do.”
Laura freezes for a moment, but doesn’t respond. She just moves the covers and gets into bed, turning her back to him.
It takes him a moment to follow. He knows he’s hurt her, but he doesn’t quite understand how, and the shame is efficiently silenced by his annoyance about her calling Natasha. There’s nothing wrong, he’s fine! Well, perhaps not fine, but at least there’s no need to call for help. They can handle it. He can handle it.
There was nothing more to it.
Laura laughs.
Clint looks up from the wood he’s chopping. Laura and Natasha are sitting on the porch, drinking a glass of wine in the afternoon sun, and Laura laughs. It strikes him that he hasn’t heard her do that in forever. He watches them for a long time, trying to remember the last time he saw her smile for real.
This time the guilt feels like lead in his gut.
It’s pitch black outside. No stars, no moon, just… darkness.
Clint is at a window in the living room, staring out into the nothingness. The rest of the house is sleeping, but he hasn’t even tried tonight. The darkness haunts him. It hasn’t before, but it does now, and he can’t say why. The seclusion, the silence, used to be some of his favourite things about this place. Now they make the hair on his arms stand. There is no way for him to tell what’s out there, and if he can’t tell, how can he keep them safe?
The stair squeaks as someone tip-toes down it. Clint flinches at the sound, but he manages to stay calm as the light is switched on. It’s Laura, and he exhales slowly.
“Clint?” she whispers. “What are you doing standing here in the dark?”
Clint shakes his head.
“What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head again.
“Come to bed, at least. It’s three in the morning.”
He shakes his head for a third time.
Laura takes a deep breath. “Do you want to be alone?”
“No.”
Laura walks across the room, taking him in her arms, and holding him close. He buries his face in the crook of her neck and hugs her.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“We’ll get through this,” she whispers back. “Don’t worry, honey, we’ll get through this.”
Right there and then, a small part of him believes her.
Clint can’t say why or how, but he knows that it’s Natasha who opens the barn door before he even turns around.
“Laura says you’ve been hiding out here since you got home,” she says. “But I’m starting to take it personal.”
He smiles, briefly. She has been staying with them for almost two weeks now, but she hasn’t made any attempts to be alone with him -- until now. He can’t figured out why, but maybe she expected him to break and come to her himself. She would have had to wait until the end of time for that. He still isn’t sure he wants her here, but the change he notices in Laura is amazing. For that alone, he’s grateful.
“How are you?” Natasha asks. “And if you say ‘fine’, I’ll hit you in the head again.”
“It’s almost tempting,” Clint mutters. “I wouldn’t be all bad to be out cold.”
“Clint.”
“The code to the arms locker is 5906-1950-4326,” he says, without really thinking it through, but it feels like a good idea. “Can you take out all the arrows and hide them somewhere where I don’t know where they are?”
“What?”
“Please, Natasha.”
Natasha looks at him for a long time before she nods. “Anything else you need?”
“Not right now.”
She nods again, then she turns around and walks back to the house. When the door closes, Clint starts to cry. It surprises him that it’s in relief.
It’s like fingernails on a blackboard. It’s the only way Clint can describe it. Day in and day out. Every time he hears the intro to Cooper’s cartoon his teeth are put on edge, and he wants to claw his eyes out. Not that it would keep him from hearing the dreaded sound, but it somehow feels like it would help.
He sits with the laptop on the sofa, trying to find spare parts for the 1930’s Fordson in the barn. Or he had been. Now he’s staring at the screen, enduring the audio torture. He can’t focus on anything else. It drills into his brain, it eats away at his soul. It consumes everything that is him, until it fills his entire being and he can’t be rid of it.
He’s drowning. It’s suffocating him. He can’t stop it. It’s going to kill him. He’s going to kill them. He—
“GET OUT!” he yells, throwing the computer on the floor. “GET OUT! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF! GET OUT! I DON’T WANT TO!”
Before he really knows what’s happening, he’s face down on the sofa and someone’s holding him down. He struggles to get free, but whoever is holding him, has both his arms behind his back and their entire bodyweight over him.
“Clint,” the person on his back whispers in his ear. “Relax. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
It’s Natasha’s voice. It breaks through the sounds of panicing, crying children, and that horrible cartoon. He stops fighting her, going completely limp, and even when she releases him, he stays down with his eyes closed.
“Turn it off,” he mumbles.
Someone does.
But Cooper is still crying. As is Lila. He can’t even remember her being in the room. He really wants to cry too, but he stays still, wishing – and not for the first time – that Loki had killed him instead of doing what he had done.
“It’s me,” Laura says, opening the door to their bedroom.
Clint has his back to the door, curled up on the bed in the dark. He has been lying like that since he managed to get off the sofa. Laura doesn’t turn on any lamps, which he appreciates. He feels the bed shift as she gets in. She moves up close behind, putting an arm around him.
The fact that she still wants to be this close to him makes him want to cry again. But he doesn’t this time either. Instead he takes her hand, and kisses it.
“How are the kids?” He mumbles. “How’s Coop?”
“He’s terrified that he’s done something wrong. You have to talk to him.”
That makes Clint sob, but he nods. First thing tomorrow, he’ll talk to Cooper. He has no idea what he’s going to say, but he’s going to talk to him.
Laura holds him as he cries himself to sleep.
Clint sits down with Cooper after breakfast the next morning. The boy doesn’t look at him, he just stares at the table. Clint feels the panic rising when he realises that his son is scared of him.
“What happened yesterday, it’s not your fault,” he starts, his mouth very dry. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why did you do it?” Cooper asks, without meeting his eyes.
“I… don’t know,” Clint says. “You know that thing that happened in New York, with the aliens, that was on TV and that Aunt Nat and I were working on?”
Cooper nods.
“Something happened before that, something not good, and I… I…” Clint takes a deep breath. “I sometimes think that will happen again, and I’m scared, Coop. I know I scared you too, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. None of this is your fault. I will do everything I can to never let that happen again.”
Cooper finally looks up. He hesitates for a moment, but then he hugs him.
“Don’t be scared, dad,” he says. “The bad guys are only on TV.”
Clint’s chuckle gets stuck in his throat, holding Cooper close. Oh, how he wished the bad guys were only on TV.
Clint sits down next to Natasha on the porch step. The sun is on its way down, and the world is orange. It will be a starry night. He’d brought her a beer that she’d taken without a word. He can tell she’s tired. Just like him. Just like Laura. Just like the kids.
They sit silently for a long time, before he finally says: “Thank you for being here.”
She gives him a brief smile. “I’m here more for them, than for you. I can give them what they need, I can’t give you what you need. You need help, Clint.”
“Where would I—“
“Oh, I don’t know. SHIELD?”
“You think they’d—“
“Yes. You’re not their first agent going through something like this.”
“Have you ever… after a mission, or something?”
“Not like this.” She shakes her head. “I dream about the hospital fire, at times. All the screams, you know. But never when I’m awake.”
Clint looks away from her, out over the orange landscape. He’s starting to enjoy the remoteness of the farm again. The lack of traffic and artificial light. He’s not sure, but it has to be a good sign.
“You’re not going insane, Clint,” Natasha says after a while. “You have a nasty wound that needs to heal.”
He makes a frustrated noise, rubbing his hands over his face. It sure feels like he’s going insane, as if Loki hasn’t quite left him yet, and how much damage will he have inflicted on his family before he’s all right again? If he ever will be.
“You really think I should tell SHIELD about this?” he asks, still not looking at her.
“If it was the other way around, wouldn’t you tell me to?”
Clint nods. He would. Health is more important than a job, and if SHIELD would have even the slightest chance of helping Natasha out of something like this, he’d urge her to go to them.
He sighs, taking her hand. “For the record, I need you, too.”
“Is Auntie Nat going to live with us forever?” asks Lila, as Clint tucks her into bed one night.
“No,” Clint says, shaking his head. “She’s just here to help mom until dad gets better.”
“Will you get better?”
“Yes,” Clint says, leaning down to kiss Lila on the forehead. “I will. Don’t worry.”
Clint’s fingers itch. Not really, but they had been idle for too long. He gave up on the tractor weeks ago, there were no places left to put up fences, and Laura still refuses to let him knock out another wall. More and more often he finds himself gripping the air after a bow string that isn’t there. He can’t remember the last time he’d gone this long without holding a bow.
One day, when Laura and Natasha have taken the kids into town, he opens the arms locker again. He half-expects Natasha to have disobeyed him and not taken away the arrows, but the only thing in there are his bows. They all hang neatly in their places, as they should.
He picks up the lightest one; the one without laser sight or any other gadgets SHIELD has supplied him with, the one that was just a bow. His left hand slides down the string, and in three, two, one… He turns 180 degrees, drawing and aiming without an arrow.
It feels good, it really does, and when he lowers the bow he actually smiles. He does it again. This time he even releases the string to hear the sound. It resonates deep within him; it’s a good sound.
Clint puts the bow back in its place. Unable to contain his smile.
He knocks on Natasha’s door. It’s late, but he knows she rarely goes to bed until after midnight. Her ability to survive on very little sleep has always fascinated him.
“Come in,” she says, and smiles when she sees him. She sits with her legs crossed on the bed, reading something in Russian which his limited knowledge of the language can’t comprehend. Sometimes he thinks she looks more at home here, than in her own apartment.
“Where did you put the arrows?” he asks.
“Under my bed,” says Natasha, pointing.
“Under your bed?” he repeats stupidly.
“Yes.”
“I’m scared to death I’m going to kill my children and you hide the arrows under your bed?” He shouts. “I asked you to do one thing, Natasha! To take the arrows away!”
Natasha looks startled. “That’s why you—“
“Of course it was! Why did you think?”
“Suicide,” Natasha says without a moment hesitation.
And just like that, the air is knocked out of Clint. He has wished himself dead by Loki’s hand, he has wished that he’d never been born, but he has never considered doing that. Not now, not ever. The mere suggestion now makes his knees weak. He stares at her for what feels like an eternity, and she keeps his gaze. Serious. Silent. Oddly calm.
The word she said rings so loud in his head, that he doesn’t notice that someone approaches before Natasha reacts to it. He turns, ready to fight, only to see Laura come towards him barefoot and in her night shirt, clearly newly awake.
“Is everything okay?” she asks, her worry seeping through even as she tries to muffle a yawn. “I heard you scream.”
“I won’t kill myself,” he blurts out.
Laura blinks, her eyes wide, and when Clint won’t give her more of an explanation she turns to Natasha. Clint does as well, only to see Natasha smile and shrug, her eyes misty. It makes no sense, cry over that? Though nothing makes much sense anymore, and before he has time to figure it out, Laura hugs him. She strokes his hair, his neck, and he instinctively curls up to her as much as he possibly can.
“I love you,” she whispers, and all he can do is slip his arms around her waist and hug her back.
It’s easy to set up an appointment with a therapist at SHIELD.
When Clint contacts Fury, it even sounds as if he’s expected the call. It makes Clint wonder how much Natasha has reported back to SHIELD, but he doesn’t say anything about it since there’s no one in the house who doesn’t need her there.
The actual Skype sessions with the therapist feel ridiculous, at first, and in the beginning they mostly talk nonsense. Clint talks about the tractor he still hasn’t found the right parts to, about restaurants in Ames, about the daytime TV shows he’s started to watch since he got home. Then slowly they start talking about things that’s connected to SHIELD, anecdotes mostly, old watercooler gossip, until he stumbles straight into the Tesseract and Project PEGASUS. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but he does it anyway.
Laura joins him during some sessions, as does Natasha later on, but for the most parts he’s alone on the bed, with the laptop twice a week. He can’t say that the sessions help, but he sticks with it, because at least then he can show that he’s doing something about this. That he really wants it to change.
And it doesn’t hurt. It really doesn’t.
It comes out of nowhere one evening when he and Laura are going to bed.
It starts with a small chuckle as Laura tells him about something her mother said on the phone. It’s not that funny, not really, but for some reason the chuckle won’t stop. It becomes a laughter that bubbles up from his gut. He laughs until tears run down his cheeks and he can barely breathe. It’s so liberating, so freeing, that he never wants it to end, even if it would end up suffocating him.
At first, Laura looks him as if he has lost his mind – and he might very well have – but before he’s done, she laughs with him. About nothing and everything. And if feels so good, both to hear her laugh and to laugh himself.
When they are both gasping for air, still giggling like small children, and drying their eyes, Clint kisses her. Passionately. With a fire that he doesn’t think he has anymore.
They have sex that night, for the first time in months.
Clint sits on the floor, with his back against the bed and with the bow in his lap. He doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, but he’s talked a lot with his therapist about the bow, and he felt that he needed to hold it for a while. Ridiculous as it may seem.
Still he looks at his hands rather than the bow; they have new calluses, from tools, rather than weapons, though years of stringing a bow doesn’t go away after just a few months.
He knows Natasha has moved the arrows – he checked the morning after she’d told him she kept them there – and he’s glad he still doesn’t know where they are. Not because he thinks he’ll use them on his family, not really, but because… because…
He has no idea.
But it feels good not knowing where they are. As does having the bow in his lap.
Natasha has a plane to catch, her personal leave is up. Clint wonders how she ever managed to stay with them for almost three months, but he doesn’t dare ask what she might have sacrificed for their sake. They’ve talked briefly about what her mission – counter-terrorism, apparently – when she unceremoniously dumped all his arrows on his and Laura’s bed. He had been too annoyed by her treatment of them to be shocked that he had them in his possession again. Somehow he thinks she’d planned that.
Now Clint waits by the car – he’s promised to take her to the airport – and watches as his family says their good byes. Laura doesn’t seem to want to let go of Natasha; she hugs her almost convulsively, and Clint can see Natasha’s lips move as she whispers things to her. As much as he loves how well the women in his life get along, it still hurts that it’s Natasha who can comfort Laura right now, and not he. And that he’s the reason Laura needs comfort to begin with.
When Natasha finally tears herself from Laura and the children (they’ve made her more drawing than will ever fit on her fridge), they are almost late. Clint doesn’t say anything about it, it’s a SHIELD transport, after all, and it’ll wait for her.
They drive in semi-silence. Natasha goes through all the drawings, and from time to time she asks Clint to decipher what exactly the colourful splatters are supposed to be. He knows she knows them just as well as he does at the moment, but he humours her attempt to draw him into conversation. They have never had trouble being quiet together before, so he wonders if she feels as uncomfortable as he does.
Finally he asks what he’s been planning to ask since she’d said she’d be leaving: “What are you going to tell Fury?”
“I don’t write reports on my vacations,” she says, putting some extra effort into sorting the drawings.
“You have weird holidays.”
She grins at him. “I’m a weird person.”
“Natasha…”
She sighs. “Pull over.”
He obeys without hesitation, but he doesn’t let go of the steering wheel. Natasha turns off the stereo, and they sit in silence for a while before she says:
“Do you want to come back to SHIELD?”
That is the question. Clint stares out the windshield; he has been going back and forth on this since what feels like forever. Sometimes he thinks stepping down it’s the only responsible thing to do, for all involved. Laura and the kids would be safer, Natasha wouldn’t be stuck with an unreliable partner… he will probably live longer. Unlike Natasha, most of his self-image isn’t tied to being a SHIELD agent. He’s a father and a husband, first and foremost, and an agent second. At other times, his mind is hard set on going back. Because Loki can’t be allowed to take anything from him. Loki can’t be allowed to take even the smallest part away. And really, it isn’t as if there is a lot of work out there for a former assassin.
Natasha reaches out to bend loose his fingers from the steering wheel. The touch makes him let go, and he turns to her. She looks… neutral. As if she has no stakes in this, as if she doesn’t care. Yet, she hasn’t let go of his hand. He knows she will stand behind him, no matter how this ends, but he also knows her well enough to know what answer she wants to hear.
And perhaps, deep down, he knows what he wants the answer to be, too.
“I want everything to go back to how it was before,” he says, quietly. “But right now, I can’t. And I don’t know if I ever will. Tell Fury that. If he asks.”
“If he asks,” she repeats, her neutral façade cracking, and she looks relieved.
Clint is too. Partly because she isn’t disappointed, but mostly because he isn’t disappointed himself. They don’t say much more on the way to the airport, but the silence isn’t that uncomfortable anymore.
As they say good bye, Clint holds on to Natasha almost as long as Laura did.
Lila sits on a bale of hay in the barn, watching as Clint works on the tractor, and talking about dogs. Or sheep. Clint isn’t sure. Perhaps it’s sheep dogs? It’s not that he isn’t listening – because he is! – it’s just that she jumps a lot between different trains of thought, his little girl. At least he knows she won’t get the animal in question, no matter which one it is.
Suddenly he notices that Lila is quiet, and if it’s something he’s learned as a parent, then it’s that quiet means trouble. He looks up from the engine, half-expecting her to have climbed up half the wall, only to see her studying him with her head slightly tilted to the side.
“Are you better now?” she asks.
Clint’s confusion is replaced with a big smile. “Yes, sweetie, I am. Much better.”
“Is that why Auntie Nat left?”
“That, and because she had to go back to work.”
Lila seems to ponder that for a while, but then she nods. “She needs to help other people.”
“Exactly,” Clint says, getting ridiculous pictures in his head of Natasha dressed as Mary Poppins. “I have you, and Coop, and your mom to help me. So I’ll be fine.”
Lila nods again, before she goes back to talking about sheep. It’s definitely sheep.
Clint smiles. If his hands hadn’t been covered in oil and grease, he would have hugged her and kissed her. Now, instead, he leaves the tractor to sit next to her on the bale of hay and talk about sheep.
There is a certain peace to the well-known pattern of movements that he can’t find anywhere else. Meditative, even. He feels the sun burning on his neck, and the light south-west breeze is tugging his open flannel shirt, yet nothing exits in the world except him and his weapon.
Clint inhales, feeling the string cutting into his fingers. It’s the third time he draws without releasing the arrow, and his heart is still beating too hard in his chest. Yet he holds his breath, his eyes firmly locked on the target – a knot hole in a tree trunk 50 yards away – and then he just… lets go.
He misses, according to his own standards, but it still doesn’t really feel like a miss.
They haven’t discussed his archery – or the lack there of – at all. They don’t talk about it now either, but Laura notices the red marks on his draw fingers almost right away, and he can’t keep the huge bruise on his bow arm from her. She tries to hide her overwhelmed tears, but he sees them anyway and he wishes there is a way he actually can talk to her about it.
But he can’t. Not yet. For now he has to have this for himself. Most of his identity might not be related to being a SHIELD agent, but a huge part of it is tied to being an archer. It’s been his survival, it’s how he’s made a name for himself in the world, and he has to retake it. Alone.
Laura doesn’t say a thing about it, but she massages his back and shoulder where his unused muscles are sore, and she makes sure that the next time he sneaks out to shoot, he brings both finger tabs and armguard.
It’s a new nightmare.
Clint had thought he knew them all by now, but apparently he’d been wrong. There had been so much blood. He had slipped in it, and he had tripped over countless bodies with arrows in them, until he had put his hands around Natasha’s throat only to realise that it was Laura he was choking.
He’s drenched in sweat, he feels like crying, and he’s trembling from head to toe, but it’s a nightmare. It’s just a nightmare.
Laura rubs soothing circles on his back, whispering comforting sounds rather than words next to his ear. It blocks out Loki, it blocks out the screams. It makes it easier to breathe.
She makes it easier to breathe.
Clint packs his go-bag; a week’s worth of underwear and socks, at least two changes of clothes, toilet bag, phone charger… the necessities. His gear will be sorted out elsewhere. It goes slowly. Every item he puts into the bag feels strangely heavy. He’s been off the job for eleven months. It’s the longest period of time he’s been home since he joined SHIELD. It’s the longest period of time he’s been home since he got something worthy to call home.
The therapist cleared him for active service three weeks ago, and it’s not that he doesn’t trust her professional judgement, but… what does she know? He’d known this day would come, the day he would be called back in, he’d even wanted it to come, but now he isn’t sure he’s ready.
It was Natasha who’d called him in five days ago, and she’s coming to pick him up tomorrow morning. He appreciates it; right now it actually feels like the biggest reason he’ll be able to do this. The mission, or as much as she had told him about it, seemed straight forward enough. She could do it herself, really. Which is another reason that he’s going: if he freezes, he won’t get Natasha killed.
Hopefully he won’t get himself killed either. As if death is always the worst thing.
He sighs, sinking down on the bed next to the almost-packed bag, and hides his face in his hands. It was five weeks since his last really bad nightmare, he hasn’t had an episode while he’s been awake in five months, he sleeps better, he eats better, he isn’t afraid of his arrows anymore, and he doesn’t think he’ll snap and kill his family, but… but.
But.
Lila doesn’t come to their bed anymore because she’s afraid of him when he’s asleep. Cooper still doesn’t watch cartoons. Laura seems chronically tired these days. That’s his fault, he has done that to them. When he comes home this time – if he comes home this time – what will he bring with him, then?
Clint lifts his head when he hears the door open. Laura stands in the doorway, silently asking for permission to come in. Nodding, he reaches out his hand to her. They haven’t argued about him leaving this time, and he finds it unsettling. It’s not as if he enjoys the fighting, but they always fight before he leaves, because anger is easier than the alternatives. This time she has just pulled away, closed herself off.
“Don’t worry,” he says, because that’s what he’s supposed to say. “I’ll come back again.”
“The thing is,” she says, as she sits down next to him, with his hand in a tight grip. “It feels like you just did.”
Clint takes a deep breath. “Have I, though? Am I really back?”
“Yes.”
Clint smiles at her. There is no doubt in her eyes, and she sounds so sure that he almost lets go of his own insecurities. Maybe he finally is back.
And if he isn’t yet, at least he feels for the first time that he one day will be.