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Avengers - Breathe Again
Title: Breathe Again
Genre: Gen, Clint & Natasha friendship
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~2,500 words
Warnings: Aftermath of confinement & experimentation, pregnancy issues, mild language
Synopsis: Five months to find her, and a lifetime changed.
Author's Notes: No, this is not going to be a regular theme, I swear. I was actually working on three other stories when this popped up, fully formed, and came out in two days with another few to clean it up.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available at AO3.
It took him five months to find her, which was fair considering it had taken them two weeks to rescue her in the first place. Two weeks of searches. Two weeks of threats. Two weeks of the country’s – if not the world’s – top line of defense refusing to do anything else until they brought home one of their own.
Two weeks that culminated in finding her bloodied, beaten, and curled into a tiny ball in a dank cell in the basement of an abandoned warehouse. She swore not all of the blood was her own and they knew better than to doubt her.
She was rushed to Medical, and promptly escaped. That was nothing new and no one could blame her for not wishing to exchange one cell for another, albeit a far more pristine one. What was different was the setting fire to the room and wiping any trace of digital data related to the tests run on her. The doctor who had run them wasn’t speaking, but that may be due to the bruised trachea. When asked to write down his findings, he flat out refused. He typed out, with dislocated fingers, that doctor-patient confidentiality ruled this one, though they knew that outright fear was likely playing a role.
Fury had, of course, not accepted that. The doctor assured him that there was nothing wrong with his agent. No brainwashing or brain damage, no horrible virus hidden in her blood. He strongly implied that there was damage to the person, and it was her right to deal with it in her own way.
Clint had understood the implications, as had the team. Five months was a long time to let that anger simmer and die down, though sparks still lit any time he thought that Natasha had undergone something so damaging, so scarring, that she would rather run and hide than let her team be there for her when she probably needed it most.
But now, as he stood in the hallway of a small apartment building just off the shores of Superior, he had a little bit better idea of why she had done what she did.
He waited until she fit key into lock to speak. “Doctor Avid regained use of his voice and his hands,” he told her by way of greeting.
She froze, tense, and he was certain she was debating which preplanned exit strategy to use. He could not get a full read off of her intentions, the drape of the wool coat she wore against the pressing cold swaying as she readied her stance.
“Good to hear,” she replied, voice hoarse and beautiful after so long without hearing it. The keys jangled in her hand and he was certain they had become a weapon.
“So’s your voice,” he admitted quietly, though he knew she could still hear him.
The shoulders slumped beneath that coat, red curls catching on the woven fabric. He knew he had an in even before she sighed, “We’re not doing this here. Come inside before Mrs. Reynolds gets more fodder for that delusional rumor mill of hers.”
Her gait was off when she stomped into her apartment, and he worried about lasting damage from whatever was done. He worried about a lot more than that when she tossed her keys onto the counter and shrugged out of her coat and scarf.
He knew his eyes were wide and probably comical when he managed a choked, “Nat?”
Her own eyes narrowed and she ordered, “Close the door,” before she leaned up against the counter and crossed her arms in front of her.
He did as directed, but the lock had barely snicked shut before he blurted, “How long?”
“Fifteen weeks remaining,” she replied coolly. She still clearly thought of him as a threat and he suspected several different types of weaponry were readily available. Not that such a thing would be any different than normal. Not that she’d need them. Not that he’d do anything to harm her. Not now and not ever. “Of course that’s just an estimate,” she continued, watching and waiting for his reaction. “It’s hard to tell when something should be medically impossible.”
There was a hint of a growl at the end of her words and he looked down to find his hand had drifted out of its own accord, fingers splayed towards the gentle rounding of her stomach beneath her sweater. He pulled that hand back as though burned and insisted, “I would never… You know that.” He swallowed heavily and tried to look up to meet her eyes but found they drifted down again when he asked, “Why hide this? We could have…”
“Could have tried to stop this abomination?” she guessed, and it felt like he had been punched.
“No! Never!” he insisted, recoiling, horrified at the thought. She must have seen something of the truth in his expression as she backed down slightly, the lines around her eyes lessening. “We could have been there for you. We could have helped you. We could have, I don’t know, held your hair back while you puked or something. The point is, you didn’t have to go through this alone.”
For one of the very few times since he met her, she looked hesitant. “I… I couldn’t…” she started, but trailed off, suddenly finding something at the edge of the cabinet endlessly fascinating. He waited her out, gave her the time she needed. When she spoke, it was like being punched all over again. “I couldn’t trust you, not with your ties to SHIELD.”
When he found his words again, he managed a choked, “Nat, please, tell me what’s going on. You say you can’t trust SHIELD which is one thing, but to say you can’t trust me? After everything… After all these years? You know I would leave SHIELD in the dust if you asked. Right here, right now, just ask and I'm there." He stayed quiet about the Avengers, hesitant to admit how much he trusted in them when trust was apparently the biggest issue at the moment. Almost biggest. Clearly Nat held the actual biggest issue close and tight. He did, however, feel the need to point out, “You called the child an abomination and are hiding it from us. Can you at least tell me why? Let me in at least that much and let me know why you would keep something that you seem to hate.”
"I don't hate her," Natasha snapped. She sighed and pushed a curl away from her face and, for the first time, he saw how tired she was. Worn bone thin and pale, exhaustion like a ghostly pallor draped about her. "I can't hate her. Not after... But I'd be stupid not to think she's a risk, both to myself and to whatever schemes Fury has planned."
She mentioned risks and he knew he was about to take a major one himself when he suggested, "Why don't you sit down before you fall down?" She looked so tired though, so tense, as if the past five months had aged her far more than she was willing to admit.
She glared, and he expected her to continue to stand just to spite him, or possibly kick his ass just to show she still could. Instead, she pushed herself away from the counter and even turned her back to him as she walked away. She didn't stop at the wooden chair alongside the table, but continued on to the small living room and sat heavily on a cushion of the the overstuffed couch.
She had left enough room and he wasn't dumb enough to ignore the invitation. It was a test and a capitulation all in one, a sign she knew he spoke what he saw as the truth, even if she didn't fully believe it herself.
He sat down beside her and she turned slightly to lean against the arm and the pillows stacked there. Following Stark's philosophy of taking a mile for every inch offered, he leaned down and pulled her slush-stained boots into his lap and began to tug at the laces. He had one free by the time she spoke again.
"This is the longest I have held a life within me," she said. He nodded and worked at the other boot, her stocking covered foot still resting against his thigh next to the knife he had removed, knowing better than to think he had disarmed her. They had talked about this before, drunk off their asses and coming down from the rush of yet another mission. She had not just been trained, but also augmented at the most basic of levels to become a weapon to be used and aspired to. Weapons were meant to destroy, not create, and she had accepted this lot in life after faced with no alternative but to do so.
It seemed that, once again, life had other plans for her.
"I want this, Clint," she whispered, as if afraid to admit it to even herself. "I want to see if I can do this. I've failed in the past, but if this is what it takes, isn't it worth it? After everything that's been asked of me, don't I deserve that chance?"
"Yes, you do," he agreed. The boots were gone, but he pressed his fingers against the arches of her feet, feeling the tension beneath the skin and hoping to aid in its release.
He wasn't sure if she actually heard him or not when she continued, "I might not make it. She might not make it, but we've got a better chance here than with some greedy scientists ready to use us as lab rats or dissect us both to see if they can recreate us."
He paused in his ministrations to look her in the eye and asked, "You really think that's a possibility?"
Her look was both scathing and moderately insulting as she scoffed, "The infamous Black Widow carrying a clone of herself? Do you know how many organizations would want to get their hands on us? On her because they would kill me as soon as she was born to make sure they could shape her into whatever they wanted? SHIELD is just at the top of that list, and even they could pretend to be altruistic and act like my death was an unfortunate happenstance. That's if they don't hold her over me to keep me loyal."
And that answered several questions right there. No mysterious father, nothing truly foreign for her body to reject. A clone with her own enhancements may very well be able to survive when her body refused the other options.
And he could honestly see some of the less than scrupulous members of SHIELD doing exactly what she feared or, at the very least, accidentally leaking the information to an organization that would. No matter what, the child would be a target. Instead of allowing that to happen, she had dropped from the radar, quit doing what she had been trained her entire life to do to give them both the smallest sliver of a chance. Even then, there was the possibility that someone would find her, find them, and it would all go to hell.
Except she was forgetting one very important thing.
"You don't just work for SHIELD anymore," he told her. He rested a hand on her ankle, partially to show support and partially to gain an extra tell should she try to run away. "Do you really think that any of us would let anything happen to you? To your child? Steve would forbid it, Thor would physically block any attempt against you, Bruce would willingly transform to do the same, and Stark would destroy any entity that made the attempt and then sue the surviving pieces just to make a point."
Her lips quirked in a hint of a smile, but flattened back almost immediately. "And you?" she asked, toes tense against his side. "Where would you be in all of this?"
"Holding your hair back when you puked and reloaded," he answered easily.
She snorted, but relaxed slightly, so he took it as a win.
"We're your family, Nat. As fucked up as that is, we are," he shrugged.
She rubbed a hand over her belly and agreed, "It really truly is fucked up, isn't it?"
He thought about it for about half a second. About a genetically enhanced super soldier, a radiated scientist, an alien that may or may not be a representation of a deity, an arrogant but brilliant billionaire, and guy who liked shooting things with little feathered shafts a little too much for his own good protecting a master assassin and her clone of a daughter. "Why should your kid's life be any different from the rest of ours?"
And he didn't question that she was going to be okay, that she was going to be healthy and whole and cherished and just as fucked up as the rest of them because, really, it wasn't even an option. She was five months along; children had been born at less than that and survived even without the latest tech at their parents' disposal. And she would have everything. She would have anything she needed. Clint himself would make sure of that, and Tony being involved would only serve as a guarantee.
He waited though, waited for Natasha to verbalize her agreement, to choose family over solitude, fucked up-ness over the chance at normalcy. He knew her choice when she mused, "So, just how ostentatious is Stark going to make the nursery?"
He countered with, "Just how terrified is her first date going to be having to stare all of us down?"
She smiled, and he knew it was at the thought she may well last that long, that they all might, more than at the thought of terrorizing some innocent kid with an unfortunate taste in girls.
They spent the night plotting and planning over bad Chinese food, trying to figure out how to get her back to the Tower with the minimal amount of bloodshed and pageantry, trying to figure out what things from this simple life she had carved out for herself would be needed or wanted in her new/old home.
Some time around eleven, she dropped a fuzzy blanket over him and curled up at his side. Her hair tickled his face but he didn't dare to move when she whispered, "Thank you."
For the first time in five months, he felt like he could breathe again.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Genre: Gen, Clint & Natasha friendship
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~2,500 words
Warnings: Aftermath of confinement & experimentation, pregnancy issues, mild language
Synopsis: Five months to find her, and a lifetime changed.
Author's Notes: No, this is not going to be a regular theme, I swear. I was actually working on three other stories when this popped up, fully formed, and came out in two days with another few to clean it up.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available at AO3.
It took him five months to find her, which was fair considering it had taken them two weeks to rescue her in the first place. Two weeks of searches. Two weeks of threats. Two weeks of the country’s – if not the world’s – top line of defense refusing to do anything else until they brought home one of their own.
Two weeks that culminated in finding her bloodied, beaten, and curled into a tiny ball in a dank cell in the basement of an abandoned warehouse. She swore not all of the blood was her own and they knew better than to doubt her.
She was rushed to Medical, and promptly escaped. That was nothing new and no one could blame her for not wishing to exchange one cell for another, albeit a far more pristine one. What was different was the setting fire to the room and wiping any trace of digital data related to the tests run on her. The doctor who had run them wasn’t speaking, but that may be due to the bruised trachea. When asked to write down his findings, he flat out refused. He typed out, with dislocated fingers, that doctor-patient confidentiality ruled this one, though they knew that outright fear was likely playing a role.
Fury had, of course, not accepted that. The doctor assured him that there was nothing wrong with his agent. No brainwashing or brain damage, no horrible virus hidden in her blood. He strongly implied that there was damage to the person, and it was her right to deal with it in her own way.
Clint had understood the implications, as had the team. Five months was a long time to let that anger simmer and die down, though sparks still lit any time he thought that Natasha had undergone something so damaging, so scarring, that she would rather run and hide than let her team be there for her when she probably needed it most.
But now, as he stood in the hallway of a small apartment building just off the shores of Superior, he had a little bit better idea of why she had done what she did.
He waited until she fit key into lock to speak. “Doctor Avid regained use of his voice and his hands,” he told her by way of greeting.
She froze, tense, and he was certain she was debating which preplanned exit strategy to use. He could not get a full read off of her intentions, the drape of the wool coat she wore against the pressing cold swaying as she readied her stance.
“Good to hear,” she replied, voice hoarse and beautiful after so long without hearing it. The keys jangled in her hand and he was certain they had become a weapon.
“So’s your voice,” he admitted quietly, though he knew she could still hear him.
The shoulders slumped beneath that coat, red curls catching on the woven fabric. He knew he had an in even before she sighed, “We’re not doing this here. Come inside before Mrs. Reynolds gets more fodder for that delusional rumor mill of hers.”
Her gait was off when she stomped into her apartment, and he worried about lasting damage from whatever was done. He worried about a lot more than that when she tossed her keys onto the counter and shrugged out of her coat and scarf.
He knew his eyes were wide and probably comical when he managed a choked, “Nat?”
Her own eyes narrowed and she ordered, “Close the door,” before she leaned up against the counter and crossed her arms in front of her.
He did as directed, but the lock had barely snicked shut before he blurted, “How long?”
“Fifteen weeks remaining,” she replied coolly. She still clearly thought of him as a threat and he suspected several different types of weaponry were readily available. Not that such a thing would be any different than normal. Not that she’d need them. Not that he’d do anything to harm her. Not now and not ever. “Of course that’s just an estimate,” she continued, watching and waiting for his reaction. “It’s hard to tell when something should be medically impossible.”
There was a hint of a growl at the end of her words and he looked down to find his hand had drifted out of its own accord, fingers splayed towards the gentle rounding of her stomach beneath her sweater. He pulled that hand back as though burned and insisted, “I would never… You know that.” He swallowed heavily and tried to look up to meet her eyes but found they drifted down again when he asked, “Why hide this? We could have…”
“Could have tried to stop this abomination?” she guessed, and it felt like he had been punched.
“No! Never!” he insisted, recoiling, horrified at the thought. She must have seen something of the truth in his expression as she backed down slightly, the lines around her eyes lessening. “We could have been there for you. We could have helped you. We could have, I don’t know, held your hair back while you puked or something. The point is, you didn’t have to go through this alone.”
For one of the very few times since he met her, she looked hesitant. “I… I couldn’t…” she started, but trailed off, suddenly finding something at the edge of the cabinet endlessly fascinating. He waited her out, gave her the time she needed. When she spoke, it was like being punched all over again. “I couldn’t trust you, not with your ties to SHIELD.”
When he found his words again, he managed a choked, “Nat, please, tell me what’s going on. You say you can’t trust SHIELD which is one thing, but to say you can’t trust me? After everything… After all these years? You know I would leave SHIELD in the dust if you asked. Right here, right now, just ask and I'm there." He stayed quiet about the Avengers, hesitant to admit how much he trusted in them when trust was apparently the biggest issue at the moment. Almost biggest. Clearly Nat held the actual biggest issue close and tight. He did, however, feel the need to point out, “You called the child an abomination and are hiding it from us. Can you at least tell me why? Let me in at least that much and let me know why you would keep something that you seem to hate.”
"I don't hate her," Natasha snapped. She sighed and pushed a curl away from her face and, for the first time, he saw how tired she was. Worn bone thin and pale, exhaustion like a ghostly pallor draped about her. "I can't hate her. Not after... But I'd be stupid not to think she's a risk, both to myself and to whatever schemes Fury has planned."
She mentioned risks and he knew he was about to take a major one himself when he suggested, "Why don't you sit down before you fall down?" She looked so tired though, so tense, as if the past five months had aged her far more than she was willing to admit.
She glared, and he expected her to continue to stand just to spite him, or possibly kick his ass just to show she still could. Instead, she pushed herself away from the counter and even turned her back to him as she walked away. She didn't stop at the wooden chair alongside the table, but continued on to the small living room and sat heavily on a cushion of the the overstuffed couch.
She had left enough room and he wasn't dumb enough to ignore the invitation. It was a test and a capitulation all in one, a sign she knew he spoke what he saw as the truth, even if she didn't fully believe it herself.
He sat down beside her and she turned slightly to lean against the arm and the pillows stacked there. Following Stark's philosophy of taking a mile for every inch offered, he leaned down and pulled her slush-stained boots into his lap and began to tug at the laces. He had one free by the time she spoke again.
"This is the longest I have held a life within me," she said. He nodded and worked at the other boot, her stocking covered foot still resting against his thigh next to the knife he had removed, knowing better than to think he had disarmed her. They had talked about this before, drunk off their asses and coming down from the rush of yet another mission. She had not just been trained, but also augmented at the most basic of levels to become a weapon to be used and aspired to. Weapons were meant to destroy, not create, and she had accepted this lot in life after faced with no alternative but to do so.
It seemed that, once again, life had other plans for her.
"I want this, Clint," she whispered, as if afraid to admit it to even herself. "I want to see if I can do this. I've failed in the past, but if this is what it takes, isn't it worth it? After everything that's been asked of me, don't I deserve that chance?"
"Yes, you do," he agreed. The boots were gone, but he pressed his fingers against the arches of her feet, feeling the tension beneath the skin and hoping to aid in its release.
He wasn't sure if she actually heard him or not when she continued, "I might not make it. She might not make it, but we've got a better chance here than with some greedy scientists ready to use us as lab rats or dissect us both to see if they can recreate us."
He paused in his ministrations to look her in the eye and asked, "You really think that's a possibility?"
Her look was both scathing and moderately insulting as she scoffed, "The infamous Black Widow carrying a clone of herself? Do you know how many organizations would want to get their hands on us? On her because they would kill me as soon as she was born to make sure they could shape her into whatever they wanted? SHIELD is just at the top of that list, and even they could pretend to be altruistic and act like my death was an unfortunate happenstance. That's if they don't hold her over me to keep me loyal."
And that answered several questions right there. No mysterious father, nothing truly foreign for her body to reject. A clone with her own enhancements may very well be able to survive when her body refused the other options.
And he could honestly see some of the less than scrupulous members of SHIELD doing exactly what she feared or, at the very least, accidentally leaking the information to an organization that would. No matter what, the child would be a target. Instead of allowing that to happen, she had dropped from the radar, quit doing what she had been trained her entire life to do to give them both the smallest sliver of a chance. Even then, there was the possibility that someone would find her, find them, and it would all go to hell.
Except she was forgetting one very important thing.
"You don't just work for SHIELD anymore," he told her. He rested a hand on her ankle, partially to show support and partially to gain an extra tell should she try to run away. "Do you really think that any of us would let anything happen to you? To your child? Steve would forbid it, Thor would physically block any attempt against you, Bruce would willingly transform to do the same, and Stark would destroy any entity that made the attempt and then sue the surviving pieces just to make a point."
Her lips quirked in a hint of a smile, but flattened back almost immediately. "And you?" she asked, toes tense against his side. "Where would you be in all of this?"
"Holding your hair back when you puked and reloaded," he answered easily.
She snorted, but relaxed slightly, so he took it as a win.
"We're your family, Nat. As fucked up as that is, we are," he shrugged.
She rubbed a hand over her belly and agreed, "It really truly is fucked up, isn't it?"
He thought about it for about half a second. About a genetically enhanced super soldier, a radiated scientist, an alien that may or may not be a representation of a deity, an arrogant but brilliant billionaire, and guy who liked shooting things with little feathered shafts a little too much for his own good protecting a master assassin and her clone of a daughter. "Why should your kid's life be any different from the rest of ours?"
And he didn't question that she was going to be okay, that she was going to be healthy and whole and cherished and just as fucked up as the rest of them because, really, it wasn't even an option. She was five months along; children had been born at less than that and survived even without the latest tech at their parents' disposal. And she would have everything. She would have anything she needed. Clint himself would make sure of that, and Tony being involved would only serve as a guarantee.
He waited though, waited for Natasha to verbalize her agreement, to choose family over solitude, fucked up-ness over the chance at normalcy. He knew her choice when she mused, "So, just how ostentatious is Stark going to make the nursery?"
He countered with, "Just how terrified is her first date going to be having to stare all of us down?"
She smiled, and he knew it was at the thought she may well last that long, that they all might, more than at the thought of terrorizing some innocent kid with an unfortunate taste in girls.
They spent the night plotting and planning over bad Chinese food, trying to figure out how to get her back to the Tower with the minimal amount of bloodshed and pageantry, trying to figure out what things from this simple life she had carved out for herself would be needed or wanted in her new/old home.
Some time around eleven, she dropped a fuzzy blanket over him and curled up at his side. Her hair tickled his face but he didn't dare to move when she whispered, "Thank you."
For the first time in five months, he felt like he could breathe again.
Feedback is always welcomed.
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I'll be adding this story to my multi-fandom recs journal when I next update; let me know what link you'd prefer I include.
no subject
With as often as LJ is down lately, maybe either the DW link or the AO3 one would be best?
Thanks again!
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And Clint is right. All of the Avengers would kill, maim, and/or spend large amounts of money to make sure this child is safe and happy.