Fallout Patterns (2/?)
This is an ongoing fic. Typically I don't share anything until it's done. But this one is long and I'm actually not exactly sure where it is going or how long it's going to be. Since it's already seven chapters on AO3, I figured I'd start posting it here too. I'll put it on be_compromised when it's complete just because I'm not sure of all the warnings.
THIS FIC IS TRIGGER HEAVY
Title: Fallout Patterns
Rating: Mature
Warnings:Suicide, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Attempts, Self Harm, Dubious Consent Sex, POSSIBLE eating disorder allusions, other warnings may apply
Pairing: Clint/Natasha
"How many memories can come through at once before they are just jumbled words and faces mixed together by years of pain?" -- Rebecca Maizel, Infinite Days
Chapter Text
Two years of working with Natasha and Clint knows a few things about what happened when bombs went off in her mind. He loves a good metaphor, but Natasha, Natasha is addicted to nostalgia. The sparse terrain of her memories made her a desperate woman, clinging to the ones that she knew and could prove to be true, and reassuring herself with the existence of the ones that were foggy in her brain. She liked everything around to be sure and concrete, rooted somewhere in memory or fact, and things (for instance, friendship, or relationships) that could not be cemented into one of those two categories were discarded as unnecessary. When Natasha dismissed something, it was out of fear more than anything. But few people knew that about her and he only knew what he hypothesized on his own. He spent most of their missions observing her, after all.
He meandered down the street, slipped into the opera house, and made his way down the hall. He strolled down the main aisle of the theatre, no one stopping him. There was one person who was sweeping and they gave him a curious look. But a long time ago, Barton learned that if he looked like he belonged somewhere, no one would stop you. So he climbed up on stage, looked around and peered around the corners to the side of the stage. Part of him was disappointed. He was surprised not to find her dancing in the shadows somewhere here.
“Can I help you?” asked someone in Bulgarian
Clint turned, his fingers falling on his belt, and then sliding into his back pockets casually. The girl had a bag slung over her shoulder and wore a leotard, skirt, and leg warmers. Her hair was still up in a tight bun. He replied with an easy smile in fluent Bulgarian, “I am looking for Raina Tulgori?”
“She already left for the day. You are the second person to ask for her. If you are scouting her for a new company, she has a contract here,” sniffed the girl imperiously.
“Does she?” Clint looked confused and tried for crestfallen. The girl’s slightly sympathetic smile and nod told him he nailed it. He shrugged and nodded. “Well then. I guess I’m not needed here. Thank you very much. Do you know who the other scout was?”
He had no idea whether scout was the right word. Recruiter? Creepy old man trying to get more pretty young girls to dance with his company? He’s seen that movie. But the girl didn’t flinch so he couldn’t have been too off with the word he chose. She shrugged slightly, the bag sliding up and down her shoulder. She adjusted it and passed her pointe shoes to her other hand. “I don’t. She was Russian. Very pretty, knew a lot about ballet. I saw her talking to Raina last night but Raina said it didn’t go anywhere.”
Clint hid a smile at that. So Raina had thought about taking Natasha to bed when they left the night before. It was a deliberate decision, insisting on going back to the hotel to make the trade. Smart girl. He sighed, a little dramatic. “I know her. We’re old friends. How long ago was that? Perhaps I can catch up with her and talk over lunch.”
The girl gave him a doubtful look, like she had met Natasha and found the idea of her having friends unlikely. “An hour or two?”
“Thank you,” he told her as he jumped off the stage and strode up the aisle. He gave her a small smile. “Have a wonderful afternoon.”
“You too,” she called after him, puzzled.
Second possibility was the second concrete memory that Natasha had in Sofia other than Raina. He flagged down a cab and handed him cash, giving him an address. The cabbie looked at him in disbelief, rolled his eyes, and shifted into gear. He pulled out into traffic and began to head north through the city towards the railroad and the river.
The warehouse where he had finally tracked Natasha after one year and twelve cities was near the railroad. For all he could tell back then, it appeared to be a storage site for dead rails and how often did railroads need to replace dead rails? It had been largely unoccupied at that time, but it had been winter, and the middle of the night. Sofia in May and the middle of the day was a completely different city. Clint paid the guy to drop him off on the road and a significant amount extra to keep his mouth shut. He believed that there was no sum too large to convince someone that he didn’t exist. He pretended to take photos of the building with his cell until the cabbie pulled away. In a flash, he scaled the fence, landed on the other side and stayed in his crouch, waiting for alarms or a sign that anything had changed in two years. But nothing changed. Sofia wasn’t worried about people breaking into its dead rail storage site.
This time, he did not care if she heard him coming. He walked up the stairs, five stories to the roof access, and pushed open the door. He knew she would be there, but that didn’t stop the relief from running through him when he saw her sitting in the sun, looking small and delicate and sad.
“Looks different in the spring,” he said quietly, walking around towards her and giving her a wide berth. She did not look up at him or acknowledge him in any way. She stared blankly over the railroad.
Clint sat down next to her and hooked his arms over his knees. He watched trains rolling slowly into the station, the lights changing on the signals, people coming and going. Next to him, the epicenter of the bomb was breathing shallowly. He glanced sideways at her and flinched at the obvious distress on her face. She looked pale and almost gaunt, like she had cried herself into some distraught dehydrated place, but she did not cry. He wanted to ask her what the bomb took from her this time, how far back their mistake the night before had set them back. He wanted to ask her, how big was this one? He stayed quiet for a long time, hoping she would speak, or move, or do anything other than stare into the distance like she was hoping to disappear.
But she didn’t. She sat there, letting the silence swallow her up, and Clint desperately wanted to reach out and touch her. He remembered her mouth on his skin, being inside of her, the way she whispered his name when she came, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her skin against his. There was no way to bridge the distance. She was a contaminated zone now, fenced off and regulated.
He could sit in silence for a long time. He could wait even longer. He was, after all, a sniper, an assassin, and an archer. He was used to spending a lot of time up high just watching and waiting. He had made a career from this particular set of talents. So the sun rose higher and higher in the sky and they sat in silence, feet between them and miles between their minds.
His stomach growled. It was the trigger they both needed and he heard her shift for the first time in hours, her hands moving to her sides and she sat back on her hands. He watched this with caution. She was no less dangerous with her hands occupied with holding up her weight and he couldn’t tell how stable her mind was at that moment.
“So I guess we missed our flight,” she said quietly, breaking the silence and never tearing her eyes from the horizon.
“We have a few days,” he replied, keeping his voice easy and low. “We can take more.”
She nodded slowly. Her eyes shifted to him and then her mouth tightened and she looked away quickly. Clint’s heart clenched.Was it that much of a mistake? But he couldn’t let his heart and mind go there at that moment. Natasha, his partner, needed him. They were nothing else, and even if they had been, she was his partner and that came before anything else. He hadn’t thought twice before asking Coulson for a few more days for them both. He wasn’t going to leave her like this. Especially not when it was his fault.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
“We fucked.” The chill in her tone sliced into him and sparked anger against his chest.
He ignored it. “Why now?”
“You were there,” she said simply. It should have hurt more than it did. He nodded, understanding that if another man had been around, she would have fucked them too. He still didn’t understand why exactly she had needed that last night but there were a thousand things he accepted that he would never understand about her so he pressed his lips together and watched a train pull away from the platform.
He said softly, “But why? Why last night?”
“I--,” she stumbled and then snapped, “Does it matter? It’s never happening again.”
“That’s fine, but I’m your partner. I deserve to know-I need to know what triggered that if we’re going to prevent it from happening again. If you get lost in your own head and lose track of your decisions-“
“I do not get lost in my head,” she snarled, scrambling to her feet.
Clint matched her motions, scrambling to his feet. His hand rested on his gun. She had her back turned to him, her shoulders set in, hard and furious. He did not recognize her tone. She sounded like the Natasha he had found on this roof two years ago, cold and heartless and desperate to be rescued from the icy sea of her past.
She spun, gun out, and pointing at him. He had seen it, the telltale way her second hand came up to brace her wrist, and his own gun out was out and pointing at her. He exhaled slowly, his vision tunneling down on her. He inhaled deeply as she did, exhaling slowly when she did. He put their breathing in rhythm together and they stood there for several seconds just staring each other down.
“Come to finish what you should have done two years ago?” she whispered to him, her voice fissuring around the edges.
“I am not going home without you,” he told her, his eyes watching her trigger finger. He had no idea if he could shoot her. He knew that he should always be prepared to shoot anyone at any time, especially someone pointing a gun at his own head, but this wasNatasha and this was their rooftop and she was a crater in the earth where a bomb went off in her mind and the pressure waves from that explosion had taken them both down last night.
“Kill me,” she whispered, her words a cold reflection of the same words she said two years prior.
Clint lowered his gun, for the second time, and shook his head. “Natasha.”
“Shoot me, you coward,” she snapped at him, gesturing with her gun.
He shook his head. He didn’t put his gun in his jeans again but he backed up and shook his head. “Natasha, I don’t know what happened either. And it’s fine if it never happens again. I promise you. We’re still partners. You can still trust me.”
“I’m not worried about you,” she said after a long moment. Her eyes were particularly bright. She shifted and lifted her gun, tapping her head with it and making Clint’s throat close for a moment. “It’s me.”