it will not last the night
my candle burns at both ends
rating: pg-13
characters: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff
warnings: none
summary: It was a miracle when that ancient lamp kept burning, bright and beautiful against the darkness. It will be a miracle if Natasha survives the night.
author's note i: For crazy4orcas and the prompt of "Clint/Natasha, 25. Light." Title from A Few Figs from Thistles, by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
author's note ii: Fun fact: 'Alianova' as a surname carries ties to Jewish roots!
[Seven days, runs through Clint’s head as he finds the next pack of bandages, tears it open and starts prepping a new pad.]
Seven days, runs through Clint’s head as he finds the next pack of bandages, tears it open and starts prepping a new pad. Seven days and seven nights, and there’s a laugh caught up in the locked muscles of his jaws, in the sense of sick irony washing over him. Or had it been eight? He couldn’t drag the answer out of his memory, couldn’t make things settle like they needed to. It wasn’t his head that ached, fever-hot; it wasn’t his body that worked to live, to heal, to just keep breathing.
But fuck it all if it didn’t feel like that.
Seven or eight, and it feels like he’s failed her, like he’s let her down by not remembering how many nights the ancient Jews had to keep their lamp wicks burning. Transference, notes the clinically cold voice at the back of his mind; it’s not the answer he wants, not the answer Natasha needs, but it’s all he’s got.
The laugh makes it out, gritted and uneven, and still she doesn’t stir from her rest on the narrow twin bed, beads of sweat gleaming in the lamp light. Clint pulls the sheets down far enough that he can check the bandage tucked around her ribcage, protecting the gunshot wound from more harm; failing to protect Natasha from the infection that already rages there. Her skin is hot under his touch, molten and metal and moving; he can almost see the tectonic plates shifting under her ribs, realigning with crashes and mountains thrust into the air. Volcanoes to burn her, magma to sear her, to char invading lifeforms to ashes and dust. For all that Clint holds holy, he can’t tell who will win.
Can’t tell if the extraction in three days will see him bring his partner out of this safe house, or a corpse.
He bows his head then, over the sweating, burning body of the only person he’s ever trusted to have his back come hell or high water; bows his head and prays. The words are soundless and unshaped by his lips, unheard but for whatever gods might be listening.
Seven days, he tells the universe, ragged, weary, give me seven days.
Then he goes back to changing her bandages, soaking rags in cold water and coaxing thin trickles down her throat. He’ll do what he can, like those ancient believers must have, and keep hoping for a miracle.
"Eight days," Natasha tells him forty-six hours later, her eyes bright with the fading fever and the echoes of her heritage. Clint nods as best he can, exhaustion pulling his head, his shoulders, his hands down; just another thing he’s gotten wrong for her, then.
He looks up when fingers brush against his cheek to see her watching him, alive and solid and continents settled under her skin, holding together at last.
"The lamp kept burning," she murmurs like a benediction, like an absolution. Like a promise.
Clint leans into her touch and thanks whatever gods may be for miracles.
rating: pg-13
characters: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff
warnings: none
summary: It was a miracle when that ancient lamp kept burning, bright and beautiful against the darkness. It will be a miracle if Natasha survives the night.
author's note i: For crazy4orcas and the prompt of "Clint/Natasha, 25. Light." Title from A Few Figs from Thistles, by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
author's note ii: Fun fact: 'Alianova' as a surname carries ties to Jewish roots!
[Seven days, runs through Clint’s head as he finds the next pack of bandages, tears it open and starts prepping a new pad.]
Seven days, runs through Clint’s head as he finds the next pack of bandages, tears it open and starts prepping a new pad. Seven days and seven nights, and there’s a laugh caught up in the locked muscles of his jaws, in the sense of sick irony washing over him. Or had it been eight? He couldn’t drag the answer out of his memory, couldn’t make things settle like they needed to. It wasn’t his head that ached, fever-hot; it wasn’t his body that worked to live, to heal, to just keep breathing.
But fuck it all if it didn’t feel like that.
Seven or eight, and it feels like he’s failed her, like he’s let her down by not remembering how many nights the ancient Jews had to keep their lamp wicks burning. Transference, notes the clinically cold voice at the back of his mind; it’s not the answer he wants, not the answer Natasha needs, but it’s all he’s got.
The laugh makes it out, gritted and uneven, and still she doesn’t stir from her rest on the narrow twin bed, beads of sweat gleaming in the lamp light. Clint pulls the sheets down far enough that he can check the bandage tucked around her ribcage, protecting the gunshot wound from more harm; failing to protect Natasha from the infection that already rages there. Her skin is hot under his touch, molten and metal and moving; he can almost see the tectonic plates shifting under her ribs, realigning with crashes and mountains thrust into the air. Volcanoes to burn her, magma to sear her, to char invading lifeforms to ashes and dust. For all that Clint holds holy, he can’t tell who will win.
Can’t tell if the extraction in three days will see him bring his partner out of this safe house, or a corpse.
He bows his head then, over the sweating, burning body of the only person he’s ever trusted to have his back come hell or high water; bows his head and prays. The words are soundless and unshaped by his lips, unheard but for whatever gods might be listening.
Seven days, he tells the universe, ragged, weary, give me seven days.
Then he goes back to changing her bandages, soaking rags in cold water and coaxing thin trickles down her throat. He’ll do what he can, like those ancient believers must have, and keep hoping for a miracle.
"Eight days," Natasha tells him forty-six hours later, her eyes bright with the fading fever and the echoes of her heritage. Clint nods as best he can, exhaustion pulling his head, his shoulders, his hands down; just another thing he’s gotten wrong for her, then.
He looks up when fingers brush against his cheek to see her watching him, alive and solid and continents settled under her skin, holding together at last.
"The lamp kept burning," she murmurs like a benediction, like an absolution. Like a promise.
Clint leans into her touch and thanks whatever gods may be for miracles.