Feels Like Coming Home | +arrowsandradiation
Natasha knows she’s gone too far - but she has to, she tells herself. She has to burn him so badly that he can never come back to her because she will always want him too.
The truth, the dirty little secret of it all, is that Natasha has needed Clint more than he needs her since the day they met.
He keeps her level, reminds her why she’s doing this. He’s the only person she would have given up running for and the only person who is keeping her here. If he could understand even half of what’s going through her exhausted mind, he’d be shocked to find how much of her he occupies.
Clint is home - and Natasha can’t afford to come back.
“Learn not to,” she tells him, thankful for once for the hair that’s grown long, allowing her to hide her own tears from him. She’s not asking for his compassion, his pity. She’s asked too much of him already.
Her words are cold, he knows how cold she can get if she tries to push people away, but he’d never thought it would be so hard to not follow them. Instead, he finally, finally breaks.
Literally breaks, as he more stumbles than goes towards her, falling down on his knees right in front of her. He just sits there, hands stretched out for a moment, shaking, before he drops them and looks down, watching the teardrops falling down on his hands.
“‘Tasha… Please…"
He’s begging now. He’s begging on his knees and he just wants her back by his side. He needs her and he doesn’t care about vulnerability or anything else. He just wants her with him, no matter what it costs.
“Natasha… Please… I can’t… I can’t live without you.”
Natasha’s watched regimes fall, children die at her hand, even killed those who had raised her from childhood - but she cannot watch this. When she’d told Clint she was compromised all that time ago, she had meant like this.
She can see him shaking through the curtain of hair, but the tremor in his voice would give him away regardless. Clint, who has been through so much more than he deserves already, and she’s reduced him to this.
It’s kinder, a part of her mind insists, but she sees no kindness here. This is only the brutality she’d thought she’d long since left behind.
How could she not slip off of the sofa, sinking to her knees and taking his hands in hers? She is made of ice, but ice is transitory - it melts just as easily in warmth as it does in fire.
“Clint,” she says, and her own tears track down her cheeks as she finally looks up at him, bringing his knuckles up to press her lips to them gently. “Don’t ask this of me. Please, don’t ask me to do this to you. Just walk away from me.”
arrowsandradiation reblogged this from inheritorofmemories and added:
When she’s burying her face in his shoulder, he thinks things are going to be okay, before he blinks, looking at her as...
inheritorofmemories reblogged this from arrowsandradiation and added:
Natasha steps forward, burying her face in his shoulder for just a moment before taking herself across the room. She...
carmy-w liked this