Fixing What Is Broken

[bornrussian]

Time doesn't fix it. They settle into something approaching their normal routine, but there's a chasm between them that's never been there before. Natasha bites her tongue rather than tease Clint and Clint tries to give her space. Natasha gives it a week, during which -- except for a few nights early on spent on the sofa together and bitterly regretted in the morning when they're nowhere near back to how they used to be, and plus aching joints and backs and cricked necks -- they relearn how to sleep alone. Though Natasha sleeps in fits and starts, never sleeping through the night. They meet in the kitchen in the small hours of the morning and have tea and biscuits together in an aching kind of silence before dragging themselves back to bed.

At the end of the week, one good thing has come from the new distance between them; Clint is finally ready to make it on his own.

Natasha leaves in the middle of the night. She hides a note folded in the tea tin for him Time to stand on your own two feet for a while. I'm going off-grid. Good luck!

She goes to Russia. Makes Fury dig up a mission for her and throws herself head first into action. Before she leaves, she visits the burned out hull of the orphanage where she spent her first couple of years. From under the remains of the swingset, she digs up a banged-up and rusting metalbox. Inside, there's a smaller wooden box. She takes it and packs it up tight in her luggage.

Through it all, she thinks of Clint, twists the wedding band and engagement ring he spent five hours buying for a cover story (and then slid on her finger with a far more solemn look than was strictly speaking warranted) around on her finger and doesn't sleep.

She hits Heathrow in the middle of the night exactly two weeks later. She gets her car from long-term parking and drives through the night. She's at their remote cottage, perched on the cliff towering over the crashing gray waves of the sea, at dawn. Walking into the house (crossing the threshold that Clint carried her across with his usual smugness), she half expects to find it empty, Clint's seemingly infinite patience finally run out.

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[stillnotlegolas.livejournal.com]

It's not entirely a surprise when she leaves. He's been expecting it since almost the moment after they arrived because he knows her and knows she doesn't do well with being in once place for long, and holding such a mundane alter-ego was just as grating. Add on him being fucked in the head and saying things he shouldn't right at the wrong moment and then the awkward tension that spilled between them any time there was any sort of daylight and it was pretty much a matter of time--

--Not that he was really expecting it when he woke up to an empty cottage (sleeping alone was getting to him, making him jittery and unsure of exactly when he was able to sleep deeply, and when he should be awake and trying to reconcile whatever he'd ripped asunder), bleary and looking for coffee.

There isn't any, and he finds the note when he goes after tea, reading it over and over again before it sinks in completely what it means. Off-grid could mean any number of things, could mean she's gone to one of her safe-houses, or she's taking a mission or she's going back to New York or the Helicarrier. And then, he realizes quite suddenly, that he's alone.

So he does what anyone might in this situation, what he thinks people are supposed to do. He walks the two and a half miles to town, finds the open liquor store and buys three bottles of decent whiskey, comes home and drinks them. He spends the first three days she's gone lost in a haze of alcohol. He doesn't drink often, only every now and again, but he can put it back when he wants to, and he does that now, drinking until he can't remember why he's so drunk and sprawling on various bits of furniture in the house until he can move again. He comes out of it when he runs out of booze, and suddenly wishes he hadn't even begun. His head is full of cotton and pain, pounding at every sound and bit of light, his mouth tastes like something has died in it, several somethings, and perhaps they have rotted there, and the spends the fourth day she's gone parting with everything he tries to put in his stomach. He catches sight of himself in the mirror--covered in stubble, unwashed, pale and weary and decides he's not quite that pathetic.

So on day five he starts the process of pulling himself back together. It begins with perching again, as it always does. He is at home in high places--it's why he'd asked her to find a place on a cliff, and he climbs his way out onto the roof, appreciates the surprisingly bright sun and settles in. There is quiet then, and stillness, and it's just him and the surf and the air and the birds and the few animals he can hear rustling in the field around the cottage. He remembers what it's like to have absence from the world and not just from emotions.

It turns into walking by day six. He travels the walking paths from the cottage for hours, crawling over rocks and walking through fields and employing every bit of field training he has to try and regain his equilibrium. He finds abandoned ponds and spends time throwing rocks at the water so they skip, climbing trees and resting with his back against them. He sleeps out in a field that night, quiet and listening for the owls, watching as they take down mice and sleeping rabbits.

[stillnotlegolas.livejournal.com]

He's home by the end of day seven and he sleeps on the couch, because he's not entirely ready to face either of the beds alone.

In the early hours of day eight he's woken from a nightmare in a cold sweat and the dark eyes of Loki staring down at him and promising him he'll never be whole again. The rest of day eight he spends like days one through three--a drunken mess of a man, passed out on the bed he and Nat had shared while she'd been there.

Day nine came too early, and he's back to pulling himself together, the new bottle discarded in a nearby trashcan even though it's still half full. He starts exercising again, climbing down the sheer face of one of the cliffs without a lead line and he knows it's probably stupid and idiotic, but he needs to prove it to himself. He reaches the bottom and is a mess of quivering muscles and burning pain, and so he makes a nest for himself along the rock-wall and sleeps. It's near full on night when he wakes, finding that birds have roosted around him and he apologizes to them as he disrupts their sleeping as he starts climbing back up, his voice rusty and strange sounding from disuse.

He makes it to the top and into the cottage and the clock tells him it's one am on day ten. He sleeps again, in the bed in the guest room, and wakes up just after dawn. His bow is pulled out of his luggage and fits snugly in his hand as he climbs back to the roof, taking shots at trees and leaves and stumps until he remembers what it's like for the bow to be nothing more than an extension of his hand, the draw, aim, release as steady as his heart beat and his shots that had been off when he'd started clustered now at the dead center of everything he sighted.

Day eleven and twelve are spent with more of the same and he's learning, with each thump of his arrow into something new, each steady step, how to be in his own body again, how to trust the thoughts and memories and how to separate the grime and slick oil of Loki's magic from the truth and untouched memories. There's still a finger print there, a dark black mark of what was, but he's building around it, trapping it down in the recesses of his mind under memories that he prefers, things before and after Loki's influence that he knows are real and true. Most of them, he's not surprised to note are of Tasha.

Day thirteen dawns and he goes down to the village with the sole purpose of seeking out human company. He finds his way into the pub, orders a pint and makes some new friends with the locals and a couple backpacking across Europe. He gives them his fake name, exchanges his fake email and promises them he'll stop by again before he and the misses head home. It's only after that he realizes he was wearing the wedding band the entire time--has been, since Tasha left him--and even now that he knows it he doesn't take it off, simply--rubs his finger over it every now and again and misses her more than he has at any point in his life.

The second week ends with him actually managing to do some things around the cottage--the laundry he's been ignoring, putting away some of the disaster he'd created during his lower moments, and actually succeeds in making an honest meal that he eats while watching the television that he later falls asleep to.

His last thought is a desperate wonder if Nat is ever going to return.

And that is how she might find him, the next morning, sprawled on the couch looking mostly himself except for the short scruff that's grown up with two weeks without shaving, and the clothing he'd been using to do the cleaning. He wakes when the door opens, reaches for his bow and the recognizes the tread and it feels, for a moment, like every last bit of tension he was holding in him drains out, and he can't help but climb to his feet and meet her, tugging her into a hug that might be crushing.

"Christ, Nat, it's good to see you--"

[usedtoberussian.livejournal.com]

All the conflicting emotions that have been raging through Natasha on the entire drive back -- the fear that he might be gone balanced by the hope that he is, the need to see him balanced by the awkward weight of the turn their relationship has taken, and the things she'll never put into words; the ones that have kept her awake in endless strange beds, staring up at the ceiling and aching -- they're all drowned out by the sheer and overwhelming relief that he's still there. Not to mention the genuine pleasure of seeing him again. Hell, but she's missed him.

There's a wide and genuine grin on her lips when he pulls her into that rib-crushing hug and she wraps her arms around his shoulders to pull him in even closer, hugging him back far too tight. Their bodies press flush together -- fitting like they always do -- and it's hard to breathe, but that doesn't fucking matter. It's been far too long since they hugged like this and she has missed it. She has missed him. Missed them. More than there are words to describe it.

"You look like shit," she informs him by way of greeting, her voice slightly breathless and very teasing, but there's a core of unending fondness beneath it all.