Work Text:
Phil Coulson was held up in medical with a broken collar bone when Clint Barton died.
He’d been taking a junior agent down a size or two when the idiot had tried to reclaim his pride and managed to put enough force behind a hit to break Phil’s collar bone. After that, Phil had put him down and then reported to medical. If he didn’t do it, he had no chance in hell of getting anyone else to. He tried to set a good example. He’d been halfway through getting seen to when the call came for the Avengers to assemble, and despite wanting to get up right then and head out, he had to be signed off on to return to duty by medical. He knew they wouldn’t, so he called Sitwell to fill in for him. He’d never forgive himself for it.
On a scale of giant rabid bunnies terrorizing the Brooklyn Botanical Garden to the Chitauri Invasion, the current fight with some AIM lackeys rated just above the bunnies. They weren’t exactly sure what it was that AIM was attempting to accomplish yet, but they definitely needed to be brought down, so the Avengers were on the scene.
Natasha hit a lackey in the chest, her punch charged with a widow’s bite, and let out a feral grin. With all the weird shit they faced, sometimes it was nice just to fight a normal human. It was satisfying to hit someone in the way she’d been trained and actually take them down without having to regroup for once. Monsters took plans and adjustments. Humans were easy.
“Hey, we’ve got a group trying to break in to OsCorp,” Clint informed them, “It’s about ten strong, Cap is closest.”
“I’m a little busy right now,” Steve grunted, and Natasha took down three more guys, almost clearing up her little group. Five more and she could head over to OsCorp.
“Can you make the shot, Hawkeye?” Steve asked, accompanied by the sound of a clanging shield.
“It offends me that you have to ask, Cap,” Clint retorted. “I’m on it.” Natasha made quick work of the rest of her assailants, careful not to kill them if she could help it, because Cap had morals and insisted they didn’t kill humans unless it was necessary. She took a second to catch a couple of deep breaths before setting off at a run towards OsCorp. It was about two blocks away, and she passed Cap as she went.
“I’m heading to OsCorp,” she said to her comm when he shot her a questioning look, continuing to run past.
“Good,” Clint grumbled. “I’m out of-oh shit!”
Natasha didn’t have to ask what the outburst was about, because she had just rounded the corner and could see the huge gun (really it was more like a cannon) that was aimed to fire at the building she knew Clint was perched on, even if she couldn’t see him.
“Hawkeye, get out of there!” she commanded, fear clenching her heart as she doubled her speed, rushing to get to the men controlling the cannon.
“I’m out of arrows!” Clint snapped, and Natasha could hear the barely concealed fear in his voice. “I need a pick up right now! Does anyone copy?”
“I copy,” Tony said. “Gotta give me a minute, Hawkeye.” Natasha tried desperately to fight her way towards the cannon, but she could only dispatch people so fast. She wasn’t fast enough.
“No, I need-!” Clint didn’t get to finish his sentence as the cannon fired a huge ball of what looked like bright blue plasma. Natasha saw Clint jump off the edge of the building just before the explosion hit.
“Iron Man, now!” she yelled, and heard Clint yell something that she couldn’t understand over the sound of her own voice and thundering heartbeat. The building practically vaporized from the explosion, and Natasha could feel the discharge from where she was standing. It almost knocked her off her feet, but she recovered, focusing on taking down the AIM agents around her instead of the feeling of dread in her gut. Out of nowhere, Cap jumped into the fray with her, and between the two of them, they managed to take them down fairly quickly.
“Roll call,” Cap commanded, looking around to see if they had dispatched the threat, but Natasha just ignored him and ran towards what was left of the building Clint had been on. It had been hardly a minute since it had gone down, but it seemed like an eternity. She could hear her team answering the call, the conformation that they’d won, and the sound of Iron Man’s repulsors getting closer.
“Does anyone have eyes on Hawkeye?” Steve asked, and Natasha had to choke back a moan.
“I do,” she said, and she hated herself for the way her voice shook. Clint was sprawled on the sidewalk, eyes open and staring, unseeing, at the sky. She ignored the obvious way the back of his skull was crushed open, blood and brain matter splattering the sidewalk, and pressed her fingers to his neck to confirm what she already knew. No pulse. “Hawkeye is down.”
“We need a medical team…”
“No,” Natasha interrupted him. “No, he’s dead.”
Natasha knew death intimately. She had been raised on death and blood, knew hundreds of different ways to take a life, but suddenly she felt like a small child completely unfamiliar with the concept. She’d seen death her whole life, but this was Clint; Clint who was her best friend, who’d given her a new chance at life when no one else had ever bothered to care. Clint, who curled up with her at night when she was too mentally exhausted to keep the nightmares at bay and played tricks on the junior agents just to amuse her. She sat down roughly on the hard ground, and leaned her head against his chest, hoping to regain some of that calm his presence gave her.
“Jesus Christ,” Steve breathed from behind her, and a moment later Tony landed as well, his face mask sliding up. He managed to stay there for about thirty seconds before he was stumbling away and retching onto the street. Natasha didn’t move from her spot, even as she could smell the stench of death and feel Clint’s skin going cool. He hadn’t left her, and she wouldn’t leave him.
Thor landed heavily, last to arrive, because he’d had to wrangle the Hulk back into SHIELD’s hands so he’d calm down enough to become Bruce again. He stayed silent as he approached, shoulders slumped and defeated. They stood there together silently for a while, until a SHIELD medical team approached with a stretcher and a sheet. Apparently they hadn’t come equipped with a body bag. No one had expected a casualty from such a small altercation.
Natasha wanted to look away more than anything when they lifted the body (because it wasn’t Clint, not anymore. She couldn’t think of the body as Clint, or she’d lose it), but she forced herself to watch. She owed him that, and so much more. They covered him with the sheet, and made to lift him. Natasha could see the media had arrived and were filming the happenings. She wanted to scream and rage at them, but instead she just pushed the EMT out of the way when he tried to lift one side of the stretcher.
“No,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“We all will bear our fallen brother,” Thor corrected her, grabbing the other handle next to her. Steve and Tony nodded solemnly, getting the other end, and they lifted. Natasha was by far the shortest of them, and held the stretcher in a proper pall-bearer’s hold, up on her shoulder. The rest of them lifted until it was even with her height, and she couldn’t even say how much she appreciated that they were there to help. That they cared enough about Clint to do this. They’d hardly taken a step when Bruce converged on them. He was wearing SHIELD issue sweats and looked completely exhausted. Natasha was surprised he hadn’t passed out, but part of her thought that maybe he was aware enough as the Hulk to know that his team needed him.
“Clint?” he asked, as if expecting to be told it was a joke, and Natasha just rolled her shoulders to indicate the stretcher balanced up there. The motion knocked Clint’s-the body’s-arm free, and she flinched as it smacked into her back on the downward swing. Bruce moved forward and grabbed the arm, tucking it back up on to the stretcher and under the sheet. “What can I do?” he asked.
“Get his bow,” Natasha said quietly. “He wouldn’t want it left behind.” Bruce nodded and picked up the bow, which had survived the impact admirably, quite unlike its owner. He looked like he considered slinging it over his shoulder of a moment, but then reconsidered, holding it in front of him. It was a big, heavy bow, and Natasha respected him for taking on the burden despite that.
They walked, bearing their load. The media took pictures and screamed questions at them, and Natasha wanted to hurt them all for their disrespect, but she stared ahead and kept walking until they reached the medivan. Half of her wanted to climb in and stay with him, but the other half knew that was silly. It wasn’t Clint anymore. The body didn’t know if it was alone or not. And she needed to tell Phil.
Phil had just been released from medical with a shoulder sling and a prescription for pain meds when Natasha approached. He could tell immediately that something was very wrong, and his stomach sunk when she looked at him with blank eyes and requested they talk somewhere private. He led her to his office, sat down on the couch when she stared at him pointedly. He was actually kind of surprised that Clint wasn’t already there napping, the same way he did after every mission.
“How did it…”
“Clint’s dead,” she interrupted. His whole world shuddered to a halt.
“…What? Are you sure?”
“His position was compromised and he had no choice but to jump. No one was there to catch him. I’m sure. We all saw him.”
“He was alone?” Phil asked, and Natasha nodded. The silence stretched on for a few minutes, Phil at war with his own thoughts. He should have been there. He could have done something, stopped it. He couldn’t have caught Clint, but he could have made damn sure that someone else did. Clint had been alone and in pain and scared, and Phil hadn’t been there. Finally, Phil cleared his throat and stood up.
“I need to see him,” he said.
“No, Phil,” Natasha said quickly, attempting to block his path. “Trust me; you don’t want to see him like that.”
“He was alone,” Phil said. “I promised him he never would be, and he was, and he is now. I need to see him.” Natasha only nodded. Either she decided it wasn’t worth the fight or could see that there was no convincing him. She accompanied him to the elevator, but stopped short of entering.
“I can’t,” she said quietly. “That’s not Clint, and I can’t treat it like it is. Clint is gone.”
“I understand,” he told her, and he really did. But he had to go, for personal reasons, and he would not be stopped. The trip to the morgue was flooded with guilt and despair. There was a hole in Phil’s chest where Clint was supposed to go and now it was empty. Empty and painful, throbbing with each beat of his heart. Only years of training stopped him from breaking down in the hallway.
Clint had been cleaned up and catalogued by the time Phil got to him, but there was no hiding his broken skull, the complete lack of color in his skin, the lack of movement in his chest. Standing over him, Phil let out a small sob, leaning down and burying his face in Clint’s neck. His skin was cold and didn’t feel human, and he didn’t smell right. It wasn’t as comforting as Phil had hoped it would be. He wanted nothing more than for Clint to warp his arms around him, kiss his temple, call him babe. What kind of cruel world was it where Phil survived being stabbed by Loki only to have the person that mattered the most die a year later?
“I’m sorry,” he said, pressing a kiss to Clint’s forehead. “I’m so sorry. I should have been there.” He reached under Clint’s high collar, shuddering slightly when his fingers came in contact with the cool metal of a chain. He undid the clasp and freed Clint’s wedding band, the one that he never wore in the field because it interfered with his grip, and slid it on to his finger. He pressed a kiss to the simple silver before setting his hand down and kissing him softly on the lips, just one more time.
“Goodbye,” he murmured.
As he made his way back to his office, he compartmentalized. He removed his own wedding band from his finger, sliding it on the chain and slipping it around his own neck. He shut down his emotions, pointedly closed the memories behind a door in his brain, and reverted to Agent Coulson.
He left Phil down in the morgue with Clint, where he belonged.