A/N: in an attempt to reconcile AOU with my clintasha ship! I love natasha's characterization in catws and i wanted to do justice to her - and Clint and their relationship.

and we hold out to the end of time

There's a knock, and he counts 7 precise taps, quick and successive and confident.

But Clint knows her better than she knows herself and isn't fooled. It's exactly how she is that she's crumbling and burning to dust and ash and soot, but desperately overcompensates to maintain a front, no matter how much it tears her up on the inside, Pain claws at his heart at the mere thought, and he can't let that happen again. Before she can convince herself to flee, he makes it to the door in 3 strides and flings open the door. The redheaded woman at the other end of the door doesn't show her surprise outwardly, face impassive and eyes hard. To others, that's just how the Black Widow is - unflappable, cold, detached. But Clint sees what they don't: the little trembles of her index finger, the almost imperceptible wobble at the side of her lips and the tense, forced arch of her back.

That's not the Natasha he knows and loves.

He opens his arms and she falls into his embrace, small lithe hands gripping the back of his flannel shirt, the loud staccato of her heart confirming his earlier suspicions. He doesn't say a word and holds her silently.

:;

Laura makes them hot chocolate and sends them out to the patio while she puts the kids to sleep, sending a loaded glance to Clint which he pointedly ignores.

They're nursing their cups in silence, the peace occasionally broken from trills and yaks from the surrounding wildlife, a rare reprieve from the gunshots and pained grunts that they live their life with. "How's Laura and the kids?" she breaks the silence, says it conversationally, as though they were neighbors who haven't met in a while.

"Cut the bullshit Tasha, and tell me what's wrong." It's gruff and coarse, the way he tells her, the way he speaks, but he can't help but soften his words - and eyes - at the end of the sentence with genuine concern. He knows what people tend to forget; the one they call Black Widow kills for a living and has nothing but red in her ledger, but when it's all said and done, she's still human. She bleeds the same, hurts the same, and deserves love the same. And it's Clint's job, even if she herself forgets it, to remember.

"He doesn't understand," she finally says, staring blankly into the distance. There's a deliberate emotional detachment in her words, even when they both know she feels anything but. He doesn't call her out on it, waits for her to finish.

Clint isn't sure what went on exactly between Tasha and the doctor while he was away; she's fiercely private about these things, even to him. But like the others, he watched their relationship progress with trepidation; not because he's worried about how the Hulk might accidentally hurt her like the rest, but how she might hurt herself instead, in order to keep Bruce safe.

From herself.

They taught her not to love. They taught her that she was a monster, and monsters don't deserve love. His fists involuntarily clenches, shoulders tense as he relieves the years of torment she had to go through. He remembers the nights he woke up to Natasha screaming, the nights he climbed into her bed because all she could see when she closed her eyes was the harsh glare of the surgery lights, the nights he held her in his arms and whispered to her until she fell into a fitful sleep. He remembers the look in her eyes, glassy, empty, hollow - that was reminiscent of his own before Coulson gave him a home. Now Clint wasn't a cold-blooded killer by any means - SHIELD arranges terminations for perfectly good reasons - but he felt nothing but satisfaction when he finally got to put an arrow through the head of Ivan Petrovitch in Budapest.

And he would gladly do it all over again in a heartbeat.

He feels small hands enclose his own, equally callused and rough, gently coaxing his fists to unclench. He traces circles along her wrists in turn, almost pleadingly.

"Natasha,"

"I just wanted to see you, so you can make me feel like Natasha again," she finally admits, hoarse and muted, eyes downcast, the hard edge of the Black Widow lost to the scared little girl he found back in Budapest.

"Tasha," Clint says, the word loaded with meaning and the torrent of emotions he's feeling.

He's the first to call her that, the only one who ever used it and understood the magnitude of that nickname. It's not just a pet name for Natasha; it's an alienation of her past, of Natalia Romanova, of the Red Room. Tasha assures her that she's no longer that girl tied to the fate of her missions, the girl who was trained to kill.

She used to be his target, the mysterious assassin who left a trail of red in her wake wherever she went. He was supposed to take her out in Budapest, before she could terminate her latest target, the head of the biggest drug cartel in Eastern Europe who made the unfortunate mistake of ever crossing the Red Room. Clint watched blazing red hair glide gracefully through the streets behind her target through his crosshairs, the movement natural and subtle enough for most people to dismiss her as a threat.

She was good, he gave her that, but to any trained eye it was clear as day how deliberate her actions were. He almost had her that day, red hair constantly in his sights, waiting for a clear shot. Easy kill, he thought, a little cocky even, that the Black Widow as she was known definitely did not live up to her reputation.

He was wrong - and right.

She twisted her lithe body through two men, leaving Clint scrambling for a clear shot while she gripped firmly unto the gun hidden behind her back. He could already foresee his newest transgression being filed for not completing the mission, when the woman they called the deadliest assassin alive visibly hesitated and then unexpectedly gave up on her clean kill. Releasing her grip on the gun, she sprinted abruptly into a side alley, disappearing from his sight.

He lowered his bow, confused, and refocused on her supposed target. A tuff of blonde hair peeked out from beneath the target's arms, and then a child came into view. He let his bow slump, now fully understanding the brevity of her decision.

He didn't admit it to himself at that moment, but it was also then that the Black Widow became more than just a target.

Sure, Coulson chewed him out, but his objections were pretty much futile when the body of one of SHIELD's most wanted landed in a heap at his feet, riddled with an arrow in the forehead and several bullet holes in strategic locations, a redhead following behind with thumb drive in hand - with information able to wipe out the Red Room completely.

He gets pulled back to the present when her grip on him tightens, finally lifting her head up to reveal eyes brimming with pain and loathing for the person she was before she was SHIELD Agent Romanoff.

Clint's heart breaks into pieces for his partner - no, best friend - and yet their relationship transcends that. There's no label in the world that accurately describes the feelings he has for Nat, and he doesn't try to. There's no need to.

"It was Wanda's visions, wasn't it?"

Without waiting for a reply, he pulls her into a tight hug, rubbing gentle circles absentmindedly into her back. Nat's scent washes over him, musky and familiar; he's held her like this many times before and he's glued her back many times before, and he will do it again.

:;

Natasha Romanoff doesn't cry, she's trained not to.

And yet as Clint wraps his arms around her, she feels nothing but a maelstrom, an all-consuming hurricane that's destroying the last vestiges of her facade.

She wasn't always this way; there was a once upon a time where Natalia Romanova was human.

She had let a target go because she didn't want his daughter to witness his death, one last dignity that she would allow her target to Red Room didn't see kindly towards emotions; they were failures, and she had to be punished. And so she was, and they took away every emotion that she had grown to have.

Clint changed that.

They gave her another week to finish her mission. She tracked the target down into a cafe and sat a fair distance away, the very epitome of a society blueblood. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a familiar head of blonde, the same guy that was tracking her on the rooftop a few days ago. She wasn't easy to impress, but he was definitely good at what he did, almost as good as her even. No one had ever followed her unaware for more than 10 minutes before, let alone for three streets and possibly ever since she flew into Budapest.

She melted into the shadows and waited for another chance, all too aware of a blonde archer perched a building above hers, sunlight glinting off silver, a challenging smirk on his (oh, she hated to say this) sculpted face.

She was the Black Widow after all; and failure wasn't an option. She raised an eyebrow in retaliation and swiftly disappeared into a store and came out through the back, keeping to the walls. No matter how good the archer may be, it would be difficult to spot her from his perch, let alone kill her.

She was wrong - and right.

An arrow came out of nowhere and pierced the tiny pad of skin exposed on her trigger finger, gun skidding to the ground. She cursed and pulled out a pair of hunting knives hidden in her boots, intent on finishing this kill. Her tracker landed gracefully on his feet and in one fell swoop, knocked the knives out of her grip and sent her to her knees with a powerful kick. Natalia staggered to her feet, but the sudden onslaught of dizziness sent her back to the ground, her vision fuzzing at the edges - and then turned black.

He was supposed to kill her, and he could have easily done so that day, tipping his arrows with poison instead of a knockout serum.

He made a different call.

He understood: he defended her to Coulson, the agent softening his stance when Clint reminded him that he too was picked up and given a second chance. He laid face to face with her when she couldn't sleep, entertained her with jokes, and on warm summer nights, confided his story. She sees a kindred spirit in him, the one man who probably already knows her better than she knows herself - because he used to be her -, and she lets go, lets go of the ice in her veins, the red she split, and allows Clint to help her to relearn who Natalia Romanova is, and who Natasha Romanoff can be.

But Bruce didn't. He wanted to run away with her, in the middle of a war. He lost himself, so did she; but Natasha Romanoff is a fighter. She fights to the every last drop of red in her, fights to the last man down, and then fights on. She has red in her ledger, and she needs to wipe it out. There's no such option of running away for the Black Widow - and the only other person who understood why fought alongside her.

Clint is solid, Clint is black and white and gray and anything but red. Back when she was still Natalia Romanova, Clint was her everything. And it was Clint who unclenched her tiny trembling fists and taught her to feel, to open her heart.

Love is for children, she once told Loki, and meant every word. What Clint and her have is not love; it's two people baring their disfigured souls, scars and pain and gashes of red. It's two people who knows the deepest recesses of their minds, secrets and fears and pasts laid out in the open, and understands.

It's two people finding themselves in each other.

Natasha feels a warm hand covering hers, bumps and calluses from years of pulling a bow taut. The silence between them stretches long, yet familiar; there's no need for words when it's Natasha and Clint.

There's no need for anything else when there's Natasha and Clint.

fin.