Open My Eyes: I See Sky (pt 1)
Title: Open My Eyes: I See Sky
Disclaimer: Characters are Marvel’s. Story is mind. Headcanon is my crack.
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Angst. Lots of it.
Author’s Note: I have feels sometimes. Fic title comes from the song Sky by Joshua Radin (feat. Ingrid Michaelson)
Summary: After shawarma, Clint disappeared. Against her instincts, Natasha has not used her considerable skills, assets, and resources to track him down. She knows he has to level out and leveling out takes time. So why does she feel like she’s the one off balance?
“So?” asked Tony, sitting down next to her and reaching across to steal the sugar bowl from the space in front of Natasha. She kept her head down, reading the news, but her spoon paused in her oatmeal. Tony was learning her subtle signs-and good lord they were subtle-that she was listening and allowing him to continue. He kept his voice deliberately casual. “Where is he, Natasha?”
Natasha didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t know, Tony. Stop asking me.”
“If you knew, would you tell us?”
Natasha looked up, her face smooth and quiet. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
He paused, struggling to match her tone. “Well. I guess I should thank you for your sincerity which is ever surprising from a spy who kills people with her thighs.”
She shrugged, like she didn’t think he believed her, and went back to reading the Russian paper in front of her, her spoon carefully slicing into the oatmeal and every spoonful was brought slowly, and carefully up to her lips. The door opened and Tony glanced at it while drawing up his own news on his tablet next to his bowl of cereal. He didn’t miss the way that Natasha’s eyes swung up and to the door, the way her spoon paused and hovered above the hot cereal, the way her right hand paused halfway through turning a page before smoothly continuing. Steve walked in like he didn’t notice, but when Natasha went back to reading, Steve turned at the sink and pointed at her, mouthing to Tony, She thought I was him.
Tony gave an incremental nod of his head.
“I know you’re talking about me,” Natasha said quietly. She stood up, folding her newspaper and tucking it under her arm. She picked up her cereal and began to walk out of the kitchen.
Steve was the one who blanched, not Tony. “Nat-“
“Don’t,” she snapped sharply. “Don’t call me that.”
And she was gone.
Steve let out a long exhale. He looked at Tony and said, “He’s only been gone two weeks.”
“Maybe it’ll get easier,” Tony suggested, his eyes watching the door where Natasha had gone.
Steve gave him a doubtful look. He turned back to the sink and filled a cup with water to put in the microwave. He said, with his back still turned to Tony, “Trust me. It never gets easier.”
_______
“So, any idea where SHIELD sent Clint?” asked Bruce quietly to Natasha one day.
She was using his lab as a quiet place to do some of her linguistic analysis homework for SHIELD. She had a dozen papers spread in front of her. Someone had put some interesting information hidden in what looked like programming language. Naturally, because it was both an obscure language and an obscure programming language, Natasha had been given the job of decrypting what a computer could not do. In some ways, Bruce found it mesmerizing to watch her work. He couldn’t deny that Natasha was a beautiful woman and a woman who had a healthy respect for what the Other Guy was but worked incredibly hard to help Bruce keep in touch with himself whenever he needed to, and then come back to himself when he needed to after a mission. She taught herself a great deal of physics just so she could have the conversation she wanted to have to ask him if his lab could also be her office when she was avoiding Tony and Steve.
He loved to watch her work, though he’d never tell her that. She came to ‘the office’ without putting herself together. She never wore makeup and sometimes her hair was tangled. She wore yoga pants and Chicago Cubs tshirts that he suspected were actually Clint’s and she sat perched in chairs, her chin resting on her knee while she studied everything laid out in front of her.
She looked young, and vulnerable, and real, which was the opposite of everything she appeared outside of ‘the office’. Bruce liked to tell himself that he was seeing the real Natasha. And in those moments, he knew why someone like Clint would fall in love with her. Of course, those were only rumors from Hill who had raised her eyebrows when Bruce asked her why Natasha was written down as Clint’s emergency contact when SHIELD came looking for him.
“You are a smart man, Dr. Banner,” Hill told him dryly. “When you have a man and a woman who were partners for twelve years now, and one of them looks like Natasha, and one of them looks like Clint, ask yourself that question again, and tell me what answer you come up with.”
But Bruce didn’t think it had anything to do with looks. In the end, he thought, Natasha and Clint were cut from the same cloth. They both had the inability to understand the different between a want and a need, a misunderstanding that they were deserving of anything in the world, and the assurance that they were required to do penances for the sins of their pasts. Birds of a feather, as they said, flocked together. Natasha and Clint were just two birds with the same feathers. They flew well together. And Bruce could see why the Natasha in his lab would be a bird that Clint wanted to take under his wing. Unlike the Natasha in the field, the one in Bruce’s lab would maybe, in the quiet and privacy of a home, without prying eyes, allow herself to be under someone else’s wing, someone who was not her.
Natasha blinked at the papers in front of her and looked up at him curiously. “I don’t think he’s with SHIELD.”
“So he’s still AWOL?” Bruce asked in confirmation, carefully noting a few results on his paper and refusing to make eye contact with her.
“As far as I know,” Natasha replied quietly. He heard papers rustling. “I keep telling myself that he needs this. He would respect me if I left. I will respect him that he left.”
Bruce glanced up at her and almost spilled his coffee all over his notebook. She looked a little lost, a little more vulnerable, a little worried. He said softly, “He’ll come back, Natasha.”
Natasha inhaled sharply and her gaze switched from lost in trance to sharp and focused. She looked back down at her work. Her tone was cool. “He is not like the rest of you. He requires distance from problems. It provides him a perspective. He is the best at what he does.”
Running away? Sharpshooter? Sniper? Assassin? Your lover? Bruce wondered and decided to drop the topic. She looked a little murderous at the moment. He went back to running simulations on his computer and letting her work in peace.