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Natasha had always known what Clint was.
They had warned her, back in the Red Room, that she wasn’t unique. No, she was one of many such individuals; people with links to eras long gone when monsters and gods had still roamed the earth and magic breathed through the land. A person of extraordinary ability, yet symbolic of a ruinous past. The word changes from tongue to tongue. The Chinese called them 助手, the Aides. The Africans called them the Oteagba in Igbo, the Artists. The Puritans called them witches, things to be burned on a stake. Yet it matters not. Clint, like Natasha, is one of those few left in the world. Clint belongs to ash and fire and the howling winds, Natasha belongs to the shadows, the darkness that balances out the light. It is a strange contrast.
She watches Clint now, as he hides from the Avengers. The shadows are her domain, yet he wraps them around himself like a cloak, and she lets him. Clint is a withered spectre now, Fradharc permanently roosted on his shoulder like a sentinel. She lets him slip away from the arguing Tony and Bruce, his Elk (Cresita) and Bruce’s own Dormouse (Dheeraj) lounging languidly by their sides. She lets him hide away from Steve’s concerned eyes, his German Shepherd a silent observer to the proceedings. She lets him coldly rebuff Thor, melting away as he sighs in defeated worry. She lets him because she knows he sees everything he’s lost in them. He sees Coulson in Tony and Bruce’s comfortable coexistence. He sees Coulson in Steve’s Sgiath, her silent eye a dead ringer to Chulainn. He sees Coulson in Thor’s open concern, his eyes shining with the same warmth that the man had. He sees Coulson perhaps the most in her, the history that they share.
He can’t handle the pain, so he runs.
Natasha lets him, because she herself is not ready to deal with him yet. She still grieves, in her own way, and Pustoy cannot bear to look Clint in the eye yet, so they don’t.
The Helicarrier, 40,000 Feet Above Tennessee (2012)
Loki has played them all. He played them all like a fiddle and she let him. God of Tricks indeed, she knows his game. The Norse Gods, Mistress Tanya used to scoff. Nothing more than men that thought they had transcended humanity. Her disdain is well-founded, Natasha thinks, as she hears Thor grapple with the Hulk several rooms away. Her heart is pounding in her chest and she struggles to breathe, still reeling from the onslaught of the green giant. The shadows do little to help against something you can’t hurt, and no amount of her brand of magic can change that. Against a monster of rage and madness, she is helpless.
Still, when Fury calls in because Clint is on-board, she staggers to her feet. There is no one on this ship that can take Clint on but her, not even Captain America or Iron Man, so she forces herself to limp, Pustoy silently flying overhead. They reach the empty walkway where Clint is, and Natasha cannot help but gasp at Clint's eyes when he whirls to block her strike. They are solid black, malevolent in a way that the shadows are not meant to be. She can see them stick to him, corrupting him from the inside, his spirit weak and struggling against a force he cannot resist.
A blast of wind roars, blades of wind striking at Natasha, but she is no longer there. She slides out from the darkness under Clint, but is forced to disengage when an arrow sings past her ear. She further backs away as gouts of fire erupt at her feet, whipping out a knife and sending it flying at him with deadly accuracy.
He rolls under the knife, only to be caught by surprise as he sinks waist deep in his shadow, Natasha reappears behind him, grasping the knife and bringing it hilt down towards his neck, but she is knocked away a gust of wind as he struggles free. She could easily kill him now, if she wanted to, but that is not her goal. Her goal is to free Clint of the sickness that clings to him, by any means she knows how. She remembers the Clint of yesteryear, full of zest, blazing like the flame he carried within. This Clint has none of that. He is cold and devoid of life, of any spirit. With a repressed shudder, Natasha thinks that this is the fate Loki would have for all of humanity if he wins.
She melts back into the darkness, unseen, and Clint strains to hear any sign of her. His bow is nocked and ready, and one false move is death to her. They’ve played this game before, when they sparred. Except this isn’t a game anymore, no. This is life and death and gods and monsters that has opened up like a yawning chasm beyond them, knocking them off their feet as reality redefines itself. Now they just have to get back on their feet. Read; she needs to kick the living shit out of Clint. She counts it as a point in her favor that Clint doesn’t realize her presence until she’s only a few feet away from him, her feet wrapping around his neck to bring him down with her own body weight. He twists, slamming Natasha against the railing, and she disappears into it as a knife cleaves through the spot where she was.
She emerges out of Clint’s shadow, dodging Clint’s preemptive burst of fire and punching at him with her Widow’s Bite, sending a jolt of electricity through him for good measure. He grabs her arm, and violently flips her onto her back. She rolls away from his kick, and launches herself to her feet only to be caught in the chest by a blast of wind. She lands on her feet, and curses as she ducks beneath a bolt of fire, sending another knife sailing towards Clint’s ankle. She misses, and the knife buries itself into the catwalk like a grim reminder of exactly what’s at stake. She sees her reflection in the mirror, wreathed in shadow like a figure out of myth and fantasy, and she wonders when this became her life.
Clint roars, charging at her, but is forced back by Pustoy’s furious screech. His blue feathers have turned midnight black, and he tears at the shadows clinging to Clint, rending them just enough that Natasha can see Clint beneath the sea of malice. Then Pustoy is batted away by Fradharc, blazing with a dark fire, and they sweep through the air in a deadly aerial dance around the walkway. Fradharc is bigger by far, but Pustoy is trained. He can hold his own against the hellfire-clad phoenix.
She glares at Clint, standing emotionless across from her. <ENOUGH> she intones, her voice reverberating through the narrow corridor as the shadows gather around her, responding to her call. This is her power. The darkness can hide, yes. It can disguise and fool, but that is not its strength. The true power of night is the unholy terror that accompanies it, the lingering fear of danger that she can amplify at will, drowning people in their own emotions. She’s using it now, every ounce of her power focused on reaching Clint, her very essence being projected at him in an attempt to free him. His eyes narrow, and she is forced backwards as pillars of fire melt the floor beneath her, weaving and bobbing as arrows rain down on her.
Clint is visibly struggling now, his shots becoming more inaccurate with each passing second. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Pustoy pinning Fradharc, a talon at the hawk’s throat. She yells one final time, concentrating everything she is into that one word. All of their history, their missions, their shared smiles and laughter in a life that was so devoid of humanity, coalesced into a single phrase.
<CLINT>
Clint’s screams, and Natasha for a brief second fears that she’s done the wrong thing. His yells echo off the cold metal and ring in her ears, piercing into the depths of her soul. This is the scream of a man in agony. The entire corridor erupts in flame, wrapping around the archer like a protective shield. Fire bursts out from inside him, spiraling outwards into a tornado of heat, melting everything in the immediate vicinity. She strides through the maelstrom, the streaks of fire parting before her as she makes her way to Clint. She drops down to look at him, his face painted with agonizing turmoil, and does the only thing she can do.
She kicks him unconscious.
Stark Tower, USA (2013)
“So, what’s up with tall, blonde, and angsty?” Tony asks as he digs into his curry, absentmindedly passing Cresita chunks of leaf, not that the elk needs it. It’s team-bonding night (Natasha will stab Steve in the eye for ever suggesting it) and they’re in some off-brand Indian Restaurant that Bruce had chosen for the week. Like the past 5 team-bonding dinners, and the past 18 training sessions, Clint is mysteriously absent, having slipped away every time someone brought the topic up in his vicinity. Tonight, he is nowhere to be found, much to nobody's shock. Natasha knows where he is, of course she does, but she’s not about to rat on her partner, so she just flips her hair and smiles.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She replies smoothly, ignoring how Bruce is looking at her, like he understands. No, he doesn’t understand. Not about this.
Tony snorts. “Come on,” he says, like it’s all some kind of joke to him. “When I invited you guys to come crash at mi casa, I didn’t expect a ghost to come along for the ride too.” There’s strain around his eyes, and it’s the only thing that keeps her from reaching over the table and punching him. Just barely.
As it is, she’s gritting her teeth, though when Pustoy’s claws dig into her shoulder she forcefully rearranges her face into a placid smile. Sloppy, sloppy. “Clint’s problems are his own.” She bites out from under her smile, words laced to venom and warning. Stop while you’re ahead.
Funnily, it’s Bruce, not Steve, that intervenes. “Hey, hey, we’re all friends here.” He says, stretching out placating hands to both of them. She shrinks away from the touch, narrowing her eyes at the audacity, and Dheeraj gives something akin to a frightened squeak.
Tony, the bull-skinned bastard, doesn’t let up. “Look, I get that he’s bummed that Coulson’s...well, not here. But come on, we’re all sad here-” and Natasha knows what he’s going to say next, because it’s the obvious kind of jibe Tony would go for, but she still isn’t quite prepared for what slips out of his mouth next.
“-but it's not as if he was in love with the dude or anything.”
Just like that, the temperature in the room drops by several degrees. The shadows cast by the hanging lights of the restaurant darken and lengthen, stretched by force of will. Natasha can taste her anger hanging in the air, a dark poison that seeps through veins.
If nothing else, it’s worth it to see Tony Stark literally backpedal, eyes going wide like he’s been threatened with very sharp objects. Considering who he’s pissed off, that outcome isn’t as ridiculous as it used to be. Watching the lightbulbs flicker in their heads-less satisfying.
“W-wait no. Shit. You mean-?”
“Him and Agent Coulson?”
“I’m sorry, but can someone explain what’s going on here?”
“Hold, this was not common knowledge? Their love was as visible as the sun!”
Natasha slips away in the middle of the revelation. Someone needs to give Clint a heads up anyway.
The Red Room, Russia (???)
They’re in a room framed by cold iron. It is starkly lit, a single spotlight casting no shadows for her to use, and she knows that this is on purpose. Her instructor, a cold woman who answers to Mistress Tanya, is seated on a stool, her back arched straight as her Mountain Lion, Ghivashel, wrapped herself around Natasha. It is not a friendly posture, rather more similar to finding yourself caught in the coils of a serpent, unsettling in the vast nothing she feels emanating from the creature and her master.
“Oh Natalia,” she would say. “You cannot be so foolish as to think we are alone?” Natasha doesn’t respond, because responding admits weakness, and a Black Widow cannot show weakness. Tanya nods at her silence, and continues.
“Do you remember the stories you were told as children? About Baba Yaga and her ilk?” Her lilting voice rings through the room like clear bells, perhaps the ones that signal funerals. Natasha remains silent, but inclines her head fractionally.
“The stories did not come out of fantasy. No, you humans lack that sort of creativity. Once, long ago, they were as real as you are before me. In the early days of humanity, they came; Gods, Monsters, call them what you will. They shaped the earth, they were its guardians long before you even knew how to walk.” Natasha knows this. This is the first thing she was taught, the things she was bred to fight.
“You called them Gods. You venerated Raksha, the Great Serpent. You worshiped the Creator Goddess, whom you Russians called Lado for beauty. What a shallow name, Lado. The mother of creation and you name her 'beauty'. She was the one that first walked the primordial world, and found the humans wandering, lost in a world devoid of essence. So she helped how she knew, she drew.”
“From the hairs of the first humans she created the first paintbrush, and using her own spit she began to fashion the creatures of the world. However, she found that while she held the images of her creations in her head, she had no way of giving them form. Despairing, she traveled both worlds, seeking a way to populate the world so that the humans would not be lonely. There she found Raksha, the Preserver.” There she pauses, as if waiting for Natasha to ask the obvious. She doesn't, and Tanya smiles faintly in approval before continuing.
“Consulting with the Great Serpent, she begged him for a way to create to her heart’s joy. Thus, Raksha taught her how to sing, the first melody that permeated the Gaia itself, moving it in accordance to her will to create the world as we know it. This was the first act of magic that we know of today. However, Lado lacked the power to sustain creation on her own, nor did she have the power to do anything more than create. Once again, she despaired, and her tears formed the first ocean. Raksha, once again taking pity on the young maiden, created the Oceans of the world from her tears, and when the creatures of the world drank from it, they were filled with the essence of Lado, giving them true life and binding their existence to Raksha, who used his power to give them form.”
“Thus binded to the world, the souls of humans split in two. Your more divine half, the one closest to the essence of this world, became known as your daemon, the ultimate gift from those that had watched the Earth before you.”
“But you humans are spiteful creatures. You called us demons, you threw us out and cursed our names, shattering our spirits and scattering them beyond name and memory.” The shadows are curling around Tanya now, malevolent hands that twist her features into ancient fury. They swirl around her, creating haunting images of gnarled trees and haunted woods.
“Then you took our fractured essences and the mortals that had overthrown us called them Gods. You saw our ruined selves and named us monsters, stupid creatures to fear in the depths of the night. You foolish, witless creatures who shattered us, ruined us!” She screeches, spittle flying from her lips. Natasha hears the roaring of the Ocean behind her ears, and she scrabbles at her throat, submerged in primordial fury and drowning in it. Berstuk, her frightened mind says. The Witch-God of the Forest that traps you in the woods and feasts on your corpse. Rusalka, Pustoy cries in silent agony. The River Spirits that drown you in their embrace, beware beware!
“Ah, but Natalia, you shall be the instrument of our revenge. You shall be the Spider that traps the world in her webs of Shadow, the ever-hungry malice.” Natasha blacks out to the sound of ancient songs, its words eldritch and garbled beyond human comprehension as they rend the air and lash at the fragile bounds of human sanity.
When she wakes, she is alone in an empty room.