nothing we were ever trained for

“It’s not like she’d just disappeared, left in the night without a trace. It would have been too similar to events in her past — a station wagon drives off into the Ohio summer night, a girl with no-longer-blue hair brushes her sister’s fingertips as they pass in the hallways, before slipping out of reach. 

Natasha had no intention of doing that again.”

After the combined events of Civil War and Black Widow, Natasha is left spiraling between the two families she thought she’d lost.

Chapter 2

“Dreykov wasn’t the only one who was still alive, though.”

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“oh, goddamn,

my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand.”

- taylor swift, ivy 

“I saw what happened on the news,” is all Clint can really say as he holds the door open for Natasha. 

She nods vaguely, drops her coat and steps into the living room where Laura is waiting. Clint can’t help it; he watches her walk, checking for the barest hint of a limp or some kind of physical injury. If Natasha needs something treated, well, experience tells him that the odds of her saying something are low.

Especially when she’s like this.

“Hey, honey,” Laura greets her. “Is a hug okay?”

Natasha nods, and so Laura pulls her into one of her certified Mom hugs, the kind that can soothe the kids out of any kind of tantrum. Natasha buckles into the embrace, pressing her chin into Laura’s shoulder and burrowing even tighter into her arms.

Clint closes the door quietly and sits down on the couch.

“I’ve got you,” Laura whispers, one hand smoothing down Natasha’s hair. “You’re safe.”

Natasha lets out a long, slightly choked breath. “Yeah.”

Laura guides her down to the couch, between her and Clint. Natasha exhales, clearly near exhaustion.

“Tasha, I need to know if you’re hurt anywhere.” He has to ask.

“I’m fine.”

Laura gives her a look.

“It’s bandaged,” she amends.

“Anything need cleaning?”

“Later.”

“Okay,” he acquiesces. “Later.”

“How’d you guys know I was coming?” she asks Clint.

“Tony told us.”

Natasha stares.

“You bought the ticket off his credit card.”

“No, I know, but how’d he know I was coming here?”

“You’re more predictable than you think you are, Nat.” Laura jokes.

She freezes at that, her hands curling into fists so her nails dig into her palms. Clint swears under his breath. 

“Ross knows I’m here. I shouldn’t have come, I’m sorry, I—”

“Whoa, Nat. Slow down.”

She gets up and starts pacing. “They’re coming. This was a bad idea, Christ, Clint, what if the kids see…”

“The kids are fine. They’re asleep, in their rooms. Tony isn’t gonna tell Ross you’re here.” Clint gets up slowly, positioning himself in front of her. “I’m sorry. I know you hate people seeing you like this, but you just gotta breathe, okay? It’s just us. You’re okay.”

She nods shortly, clenching and unclenching her fists in time with each rapid breath.

“You’re okay,” he repeats, but her eyes are fixed over his shoulder, at the kitchen table. After a quick glance over his shoulder, he turns back to her and slowly takes her hands into his, holding back a wince as her nails immediately bite into his skin.

She closes her eyes. 

“Deep breaths,” Clint reminds her, and she nods. Her hand goes to his shoulder, tugging lightly, and he gets the hint, leaning forwards until his forehead rests against hers.

They rest there for a moment. He squeezes her hand in time with his breaths, and eventually hers start to slow down.

“Okay?” he checks.

“Think so.”

“Sit down?”

She nods, her forehead bumping against his, and they sit back down in their original spots.

Natasha slumps forwards, her chin in her hands, eyes fixed on the same spot at the kitchen table. Clint looks at Laura, signing a quick question over Natasha’s head.

Dissociating?

Don’t think so, she signs back.

“I know you’re talking about me behind my back.”

“We’re not saying a word.” Clint reminds her. She reaches a hand back to swat listlessly at his knee.

“Nat, honey, what’s with the kitchen table?” Laura asks, ever the peacekeeper.

“I had a dream.”

“And… you were here?”

“Yeah, I came in…” she points to the door, “and you guys were watching TV on the couch. And when I came around to sit down, I…”

She looks down. “I’d killed you guys.”

It’s nothing she hasn’t had before. He wants to ask, on the risk of sounding heartless, why that’s enough to warrant this kind of reaction.

“And he was sitting at the kitchen table.” She bites out the he with such vehemence that she leaves no confusion as to who she’s referring to.

“Dreykov.”

“He told me I did good. He said, welcome home.”

“Tasha, Dreykov’s dead. We killed him, eight years ago.”

“You saw the news,” she says bitterly, staring straight ahead. “You really think that’s true?”

“Shit,” Laura curses, and Natasha and Clint look at her, mildly surprised. “You talked to him?”

“Yelled. He controlled me with his weird mind altering pheremones, I punched him in the face.”

Despite the thrill he gets from hearing that Nat was finally able to give him even a fragment of what he deserved, his stomach still sinks. Being under his control again, after so long… that can’t be good. 

“Then what?”

She looks at him, emotionless, and mimes an explosion.

Laura puts an arm around her shoulder, and Natasha leans into her side.

“Natasha, you know that’s a huge thing that’s happened, right?” Clint asks her. “It’s okay to be struggling right now. That’s… that’s like a regular shitshow of resurfaced trauma.”

She laughs a little.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’re not wrong.”

She bites her lip, her face sober again and eyes distant.

“Dreykov wasn’t the only one who was still alive, though.”

Clint’s stomach drops further, thinking of the various instructors and handlers Natasha’s told him about. “Who?”

She whispers one word, the guilt heavier in her eyes than it’s been the whole time she’s been here.

Yelena.

Yelena, the girl from the stories. If you believe Natasha, she was made entirely of sunshine and fireworks and had most of the world wrapped around her little finger and the rest of it at her fingertips.

If you believe Natasha, she’s the one who killed her.

“You said she was dead.” He doesn’t mean to sound accusatory, but maybe it comes out that way.

“I had kind of hoped she was.”

“How is she?” Is all Laura wants to know.

“She’s hurting right now,” she replies honestly. “Dreykov has chemical subjugation implanted in all of the newer generation Widows — leaves them with no choice, no chance of defection. She told me she didn’t know which part was her.” Her voice is flat, listless.

“Chemical subjugation?”

Laura kicks him lightly. “You don’t have to tell us all the technical details right now, if you don’t want. How’d your reunion go?”

“Beat each other up.” A little life, a little humor creeps back into her voice.

“Ha. That’s the sibling impulse,” Clint laughs. “You guys really are sisters.”

A little smile creeps across her face, and she leans back against the couch. “Yep.”

“Who won?”

Laura kicks him again.

“Me.”

“Good for you.”

“I always let her win when we were kids. I guess she wasn’t trying to stab me then.”

“C’mon, Nat, she wouldn’t have actually stabbed you.”

“Maybe.” She sounds unconvinced.

“So if Yelena was alive, what about…” Laura leaves the question hanging.

“Mom and Dad?” The corner of her mouth lifts in an ironic grin. “Yeah, they’re still around.”

“Did you see them?”

“We — me and Yelena — busted Alexei out of prison, and then we went to see Melina. Turns out she’s been working remotely for the Red Room for a while now.”

“After all that time?” Clint’s shocked.

She glares at him. “It’s not so easy to get out, you know.”

“I know. I wasn’t judging. I just… shit, it must’ve been really hard for her, working for him for so long.”

“Her especially.”

“How d’you mean?” The question slips from Clint’s mouth, flippant, without him really considering it — Natasha’s history, what she’s told him about Dreykov, what he’d done to her.

“She was his favorite.” She pauses, then adds, “before me.”

Clint nods his understanding, and laces his fingers through hers. “But he’s dead now.”

“He’s dead now,” she confirms, meeting his eyes. A slow smile makes its way onto her face, shaken yet triumphant. Clint smiles back.

Natasha leans back into Laura’s arms once again, this time much more relaxed but still, Clint can tell, on edge. Laura runs her hand over Natasha’s curls soothingly while Clint strokes his thumb over the back of her hand, squeezing occasionally to keep her present.

He notices her wrists are free of the puffy red marks and blue-gray bruises that speak to the use of handcuffs, a fact that relieves him immensely. He knows the signs on her body that denote danger, the marks on her wrist being one of them, the small crescent marks of her nails on her skin being another. Those she has, littered in groups over her upper arms and near the baby hairs on the back of her neck. He doesn’t blame her for not being able to handle her thoughts right now, and god knows it’s at least better than her older coping mechanisms, so he says nothing.

Laura is the one to break the silence. “Nat, you said there was something that needed cleaning?”

She rolls her eyes. “We were having such a nice moment.”

“We can have another nice moment when all your injuries are clean.”

“Just the one. On my back, right shoulder.”

“Okay if I look at it?”

“Yeah.” Natasha pulls her shirt up to hang loosely around her neck. Laura peels off the thick bandage, allowing Clint to see the deep cut, held together by a row of stitches, that lies to the side of her shoulder blade. All things considered, it looks to be healing well — no redness for infection, no popped stitches.

“They probably need to be taken out,” Natasha admits.

“Let’s do that in the bathroom,” Laura decides, and so they go, Clint fully aware he’s tagging along for emotional support only. His stitches are good in a pinch, but Laura’s always been better at this than he has. She is a healer, in all senses of the word.

There’s peace, there in the yellow light of the bathroom, if only for a little while. Clint and Natasha talk in low voices while Laura works the stitches out one by one.

They’re interrupted by a knock on the bathroom door. “Daddy?”

“I got it.” Clint squeezes Natasha’s hand once more, kisses Laura on the cheek, then leaves the warm light of the bathroom.

“Hey, Coop, what’s up?” 

Drowsy eyes stare up at him. “I heard Auntie Nat.”

“Oh. Yeah, well, she can’t talk right now, okay? Maybe in the morning.”

“Why?”

Clint scoops him up. “She’s got a little ouchie.”

“Why?”

Didn’t he already go through this phase?

“Is it because she’s a superhero?” Cooper’s face is squished right up in his ear as they go up the stairs.

“Yeah, that’s why. She saved a lot of people this time, you know that? A lot of people.”

“Auntie Nat is my favoritest superhero. Besides you.”

“You should tell her tomorrow, huh? She could use it.”

“Okay.” Cooper agrees.

“Okay. Now shh, don’t wake your sister.” Clint steers him into his and Lila’s room. 

“I love you, Daddy.” Cooper whispers, crawling into bed.

“I love you more.” He presses a kiss onto his forehead. “See you in the morning.”

Cooper’s eyes are already drifting shut.

“I love you more,” he whispers again, then backs out of the room, shutting the door behind him quietly as possible.

When he gets back to the downstairs bathroom, Laura already has Natasha’s stitches removed and the skin Vaseline-d and re-bandaged. Nat’s head is drooping from exhaustion.

“C’mon, Tasha,” he murmurs, slipping an arm around her shoulders.

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” she admits.

“It’s okay. I’ll stay with you, and we’ll just go lie down on the couch, alright?” He gives Laura a silent thank you glance. God knows what he’d do without this woman — either of them, actually.

Clint sits the two of them down on the sofa, pulls a blanket over their legs. Natasha adjusts herself so that she’s lying curled up against him, her head on his chest. “Good?” Clint asks, and receives a slow nod in return.

Laura comes in, presses a soft kiss to his lips and a gentle squeeze to Nat’s shoulder before she leaves the two of them be, just for now. It’s not like Laura knows Natasha any less completely than he does, or that Natasha is any less comfortable around her than she is with Clint, but she has a hard enough time falling asleep with one person around, let alone two. Even if she doesn’t want to be alone.

“Tell me about Yelena.”

Clint can see Natasha smile into the vague glow of light from the kitchen.

“Once we went on a camping trip,” she starts, and the words flow steady and soft from her lips, “and we went fishing. We caught a lot of fish, actually, but Yelena wouldn’t let us keep any of them. Every time we caught one, she barely let Alexei take our picture with it before she made us throw it back into the lake. She had us wrapped around her little finger from day one.”

She keeps talking, her words slowing as she drifts, until there’s only silence. Clint falls asleep not long after she does, thinking about big sisters and little brothers, moms, dads, sons and daughters.

For once, the memories aren’t painful.

The first thing Clint does when he wakes up is go upstairs and tell the kids that Auntie Nat is here.

Okay, that’s a lie — the first thing Clint does when he wakes up is put in his hearing aids, stretch out his sore muscles, and figure out where everyone is in the house. He’d told Natasha he was done with the spy life, but they both knew that was a lie. He hadn’t even told Laura.

The good news is, nothing in the house is out of place. The kids are quiet in their rooms — which makes sense, as it’s six am. Laura is out on the patio with Nathaniel and Natasha, where they sit most mornings Nat’s here.

The next thing he does is hurry the kids down the stairs in a screeching whirlwind of loud pajamas and sharp elbows.

By the time he gets downstairs himself, and out to the patio, Lila has made herself comfortable on Nat’s lap, and Cooper is talking to her animatedly, swinging all five of them on the porch swing.

Clint chooses a boring, stationary chair for himself. “No good mornings for me?”

Cooper gives him a good morning, Dad, but Lila just hugs Natasha closer and says, “No. Auntie Nat is here, and you’re boring-er than her.”

“Boring people still deserve a good morning,” Natasha reminds her.

Lila heaves a deep sigh akin to a man who’s lived a thousand years of suffering, and grumbles, “Good morning, Dad.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“There you go, big girl.” Natasha runs a fingertip down between Lila’s eyes and taps her on the nose. “Was that so hard?”

She giggles. “Yes.”

“Auntie Nat?” Cooper speaks up.

“Yeah?”

“How long are you gonna be here?”

“I don’t really know,” she answers, and she looks at Clint when she says it.

“You’re always welcome here, for however long,” he tells her. “You know that.”

Natasha nods, then addresses Cooper. “How long do you want me to stay for?”

“Forever and ever!”

“How about a week?”

Cooper seems to think that’s fair, then turns to Laura and asks about pancakes for breakfast. A force of nature, that kid.

Laura pretends to consider it. “Hmm… how about you help me make the pancakes?”

“Okay!”

Clint realizes what she’s doing. There’s a conversation that needs to happen, one better without the listening ears of the kids. Laura hands him the baby, and coaxes Lila into the kitchen under the promise of chocolate chips.

With the space freed, he sits next to Nat on the porch swing, kicking his feet to move them gently back and forth.

“So.” He starts.

“So.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“Mo — Melina’s place?”

“I’m assuming so, yeah.”

“You’ve read the obituaries.”

“I have.”

She shrugs, and gives him that look that he recognizes from a hundred similar conversations before. “Red in my ledger, Clint.”

“Not to sound callous, but what makes you different?”

She bites the inside of her cheek and doesn’t meet his eyes. After a long pause, she says, “None of the Widows in Melina’s house would be there, if we hadn’t… we hadn’t failed.”

“In killing Dreykov, you mean.”

“We should’ve checked the body.”

“Not a lot survives an explosion like that, you know that. We couldn’t even be sure there was a body.”

“It’s my—”

“It’s absolutely not your fault. It’s Dreykov’s fault, and every other sick—”

“He turned his daughter into a weapon, Clint.” Her voice is emotionless and firm. “A machine, chemically controlled beyond recognition. He couldn’t even look at her. And those Widows, he had them, for years. Because of me.”

“I get no responsibility here?”

“It’s not your mess.”

“Then why is it yours?”

“I should have saved them,” she tells him, and the words burst out like a weight flying free from her chest. “I should have saved all of them.”

“You did. A week ago.”

Her jaw clenches and her eyes fly to the ceiling.

“You’re a hero, Tasha,” he tells her gently. She drops her head to his chest, and he feels her silent tears soak into his shirt. He takes the arm that’s not holding Nate, and wraps it around her shaking shoulders. “You’re a hero to me, and my kids, and a million little girls and boys around the world. And you’re especially a hero to every girl you single-handedly got out of the Red Room.”

“I had help.”

“Oh, c’mon. All the heroic shit you do has to be a team effort, but the weight of any kind of failure has to rest on your shoulders alone? What kind of logic is that?”

She laughs against his chest. “It was a team effort, though.”

“Still. Take some credit.”

“Okay.”

“Good. Cooper wanted me to tell you something, by the way.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“You’re his favoritest superhero.”

“I love that kid,” she sighs.

She cries into his shirt while the sun rises. When she’s done, and her tears are dry for now (there’s sure to be more of these talks later, and tears, in this coming week), the three of them let themselves into the warmth of the kitchen and eat chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.

Just for a moment, everything is fine.

I’m not crying, you are.

I want you to look right in my eyes

To tell me you love me

To be by my side

I want you at the end of my life

I wanna see your face when I fall with grace

At the moment I die

Is that alright?

Is that alright?

“Let me go… It’s okay.”

Is it too soon?