Fixing What Is Broken
Time doesn't fix it. They settle into something approaching their normal routine, but there's a chasm between them that's never been there before. Natasha bites her tongue rather than tease Clint and Clint tries to give her space. Natasha gives it a week, during which -- except for a few nights early on spent on the sofa together and bitterly regretted in the morning when they're nowhere near back to how they used to be, and plus aching joints and backs and cricked necks -- they relearn how to sleep alone. Though Natasha sleeps in fits and starts, never sleeping through the night. They meet in the kitchen in the small hours of the morning and have tea and biscuits together in an aching kind of silence before dragging themselves back to bed.
At the end of the week, one good thing has come from the new distance between them; Clint is finally ready to make it on his own.
Natasha leaves in the middle of the night. She hides a note folded in the tea tin for him Time to stand on your own two feet for a while. I'm going off-grid. Good luck!
She goes to Russia. Makes Fury dig up a mission for her and throws herself head first into action. Before she leaves, she visits the burned out hull of the orphanage where she spent her first couple of years. From under the remains of the swingset, she digs up a banged-up and rusting metalbox. Inside, there's a smaller wooden box. She takes it and packs it up tight in her luggage.
Through it all, she thinks of Clint, twists the wedding band and engagement ring he spent five hours buying for a cover story (and then slid on her finger with a far more solemn look than was strictly speaking warranted) around on her finger and doesn't sleep.
She hits Heathrow in the middle of the night exactly two weeks later. She gets her car from long-term parking and drives through the night. She's at their remote cottage, perched on the cliff towering over the crashing gray waves of the sea, at dawn. Walking into the house (crossing the threshold that Clint carried her across with his usual smugness), she half expects to find it empty, Clint's seemingly infinite patience finally run out.
At the end of the week, one good thing has come from the new distance between them; Clint is finally ready to make it on his own.
Natasha leaves in the middle of the night. She hides a note folded in the tea tin for him Time to stand on your own two feet for a while. I'm going off-grid. Good luck!
She goes to Russia. Makes Fury dig up a mission for her and throws herself head first into action. Before she leaves, she visits the burned out hull of the orphanage where she spent her first couple of years. From under the remains of the swingset, she digs up a banged-up and rusting metalbox. Inside, there's a smaller wooden box. She takes it and packs it up tight in her luggage.
Through it all, she thinks of Clint, twists the wedding band and engagement ring he spent five hours buying for a cover story (and then slid on her finger with a far more solemn look than was strictly speaking warranted) around on her finger and doesn't sleep.
She hits Heathrow in the middle of the night exactly two weeks later. She gets her car from long-term parking and drives through the night. She's at their remote cottage, perched on the cliff towering over the crashing gray waves of the sea, at dawn. Walking into the house (crossing the threshold that Clint carried her across with his usual smugness), she half expects to find it empty, Clint's seemingly infinite patience finally run out.