#HIS SUPPOSED SACRIFICE FOR HER MADE HER BRAVE. POUNDS MY FISTS ON THE FLOOR.

[arttheclown]

how i’m holding up after watching the beginning of the end for the first time and seeing discord’s speech to twilight

[em2mb]

Post-Endgame, Clint/Laura.

.

He holds onto Laura for a long time – tears sliding down both their cheeks, her loose hair ruffling in the breeze, their kids shifting restlessly, not sure if they should make this a many-armed hug or give their parents a moment. Clint wants to confess all of his sins, everything he’s been holding in since Natasha threw herself off the cliff in Vormir, but now isn’t the time, not if they’re going to sleep tonight in the dusty, decaying farmhouse that used to be their home.

Laura sniffles against his chest and tilts her face up. “Divide and conquer,” she tells him, and he wonders if the brave face she’s putting on is for him or the kids. “I’ll check the well. You get the generator going.”

“Deal,” Clint says. “Cooper, go see if the toolkit’s still under the sink, will you?”

It takes the better part of two hours to get the lights back on in the house, and when Clint comes back in, Laura is in the living room, shaking out their seldom-used sleeping bags and explaining to the kids that it’s just for tonight, tomorrow she’ll help them strip their beds and remake them with clean sheets. Cooper grumbles about the arrangement – “I don’t care if there’s five years of dust on my bed,” he insists – but all it takes is one warning look from his mother and he’s psyching his little brother up for indoor camping.

“I’d forgotten what monsters 13-year-old boys are,” Laura says, though not without affection, as Cooper and Nate roughhouse, and it’s the first time but not the last time Clint’s left to wonder if his wife was telling the truth when she said five years felt like a very long nap.

“Easy,” Clint calls because it looks like Cooper’s going to put Nate in a headlock. He crosses his arms and casts a sidelong glance at Laura. “So you told them. That it’s been five years.”

“Mmm,” Laura murmurs, her watchful eyes trained on Cooper and Nate. “I figured they’d learn the truth sooner or later, so there wasn’t much point keeping it from them. Well, from Cooper and Lila. I have no idea how to explain any of this in an age-appropriate way to Nate. I’m not even sure if I fully understand – ”

But she’s interrupted by Lila screaming her head off. Fortunately for Clint, the snake is the toilet is mostly harmless.

“He isn’t interested in hurting you,” he assures Lila, rolling up his sleeves as the rest of the family peers warily into the bathroom. He realizes about a second too late that they haven’t seen his tattoos yet.

“Wow, Dad,” Cooper breathes, “is that a dragon?” before Laura can shuffle them off. She pulls the door shut firmly behind her, and he can hear her in the hallway telling the kids to shoo, scram, give their dad some space.

Clint closes his eyes and takes a deep, shuddering breath. He wonders if coming back so soon had been a bad idea. He’s not entirely sure he remembers how to be a husband, how to be a father.

The bathroom door opens. “You want me to take care of the creepy-crawly?” Laura asks, wrapping her arms around Clint’s waist.

“Someone really should,” Clint quips, dropping a kiss on the top of her head and breathing in the scent of her shampoo. “How many kids are eavesdropping on the other side of that door?”

They both listen as the creaky old house comes back to life – the scuff of shoes in the hallway, kids’ voices in the kitchen, the opening and closing of cabinets, another piercing shriek from Lila – before Laura declares, quite confidently, “Zero, though once you’ve released that guy into the wild, I’m going to need you to kill a mouse.”

Clint chuckles softly into her hair. “I can do that,” he tells her, then he apologizes because it’s his fault their house is falling apart. “Laur, I’m sorry. I really let this place go to shit, didn’t I?”

“Hey,” she says, cupping his face in her hands, “that’s the last time I want to hear you apologize for something that wasn’t your fault.” She kisses his mouth. “And the last time I want to hear you swear in this house, Clint Barton.” She arches an eyebrow, like she’s daring him to challenge her.

He would never. “Yes, dear,” Clint mumbles against her mouth as she kisses him again.

“I’m glad that’s settled,” Laura says brightly, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Now, was there something you needed to say away from little ears?”

Clint closes his eyes, exhaling slowly, unsure where even to begin. There’s red in his ledger now, and he’ll have to tell her about Ronin eventually, but his more pressing concern is how to break it to the kids that Auntie Nat won’t be coming around anymore. “It’s about Natasha,” he says, lump rising in his throat.

This time, it’s Laura who takes the deep, shuddering breath, and tears leak from her beautiful brown eyes. “It’s OK, Clint,” she tells him, “it’s OK, I forgive you. Five years is a long time, especially if you thought we were gone forever. It’s in the past, it’s – I forgive you, OK? I forgive you. Both of you. Tell Nat – tell Nat – ” Laura chokes back a sob “ – she should be here. I want her here. Tell her that, OK?”

“What?” Clint says, frowning down at her because there’s no way for her to know what happened on Vormir, a soul for a soul, the sacrifice Natasha had made then so he could hold Laura now, no reason for forgiveness to enter the equation, unless –

Unless she thinks you’re admitting an affair.

The force of the realization makes Clint let go of his wife. “Jesus, Laura,” he snaps. “That’s immediately where you went? I didn’t cheat on you. Not with Nat, not with anyone. And there’s no message to pass along because Nat’s dead. She’s dead. She died.” I killed her.

Laura blinks. “No,” she whispers, taking a step back, away from him. “No, no. No. You’re always supposed to come back. Both of you. That’s what you promised. You and Nat, you’d always – ”

“Yeah, well, I should never’ve made that promise,” Clint says as hot tears of pain and frustration well in his eyes, and he swipes them away with the heel of his palm, “because eventually one of us wasn’t going to come back.”

Laura’s still shaking her head. “No,” she says again, even more vehemently. “No, you said – you said Dr. Banner snapped his fingers and brought us all back.”

“Not Nat,” Clint says, raking a hand through his hair. “Bruce says he tried, Laur, and I believe him. But he couldn’t bring her back. She’s really gone.”

He isn’t prepared for Laura’s wail of anguish, her guttural howl. She grasps blindly behind her for the sink, but her hands miss by a long shot, and she collapses in a heap on the floor before Clint can catch her, sobbing so hard she’s hyperventilating. He needs to get her calmed down – the kids are already crashing through the house, hollering, “Mom! Mom! Are you all right?” – but when he tries to wrap his arms around her, she begins pounding on his chest.

He lets her. “I know,” Clint says, catching one of her clenched fists before she can sock him in the jaw. “I know, baby, I know.”

Cooper pounds on the door. “Dad? Dad? What happened? Is something – ”

“Coop, I need you to take your sister and brother outside,” Clint interrupts. “I’ll come get you guys in a little bit, OK?” No answer. “OK, bud?”

“OK,” Cooper says reluctantly, and Clint can hear him shepherding Lila and Nate out of the hallway.

The exchange through the door seems to subdue Laura, though her face is still scrunched up, tears leaking from her closed eyes.

“Laura,” Clint says, cupping her cheek in his hand. She rolls her face toward his touch. “Open your eyes for me, babe.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want to,” she insists. “No. This is a really horrible nightmare, and if I just keep my eyes closed, I can still wake up.”

“Laura.”

“Did she suffer?” Laura whispers.

“No, babe. She didn’t.”

“Who killed her?”

Clint closes his eyes, too. The truth is, Natasha had taken that running leap herself. “No one,” he says heavily. “She sacrificed herself so we could bring everyone else back. She saved the world, Laur.”

“No,” Laura sniffles. “No, she didn’t.” Her voice cracks. “She saved us.”