“I’m not coming home, don’t look for me.” Number 53. I’ll leave it to you who’s talking to who b/c there’s so many ways this could go!
There had been so many places that Clint could have gone after... after Wakanda. After Thanos. After they’d lost. Especially when they’d all realized what had happened. For the first time since she’s joined SHIELD, Natasha has no idea of where to look for Clint.
She’s gone to all the safe houses she knows of - even the ones he tried to keep from her. Even the one Laura told her about, when Clint wasn’t listening.
She’s gone to the apartment building in Bed-Stuy to look for him, but had only found his brother, filling up for what looked like a long trek across the country.
She’d gone to the old folk’s home where she knows Buck Chisholm, Clint’s old mentor from the circus, is staying. Trickshot, as he used to be called, hadn’t seen Clint during the time after Wakanda.
She’d gone to their shared safe house a couple of miles out from DC, where they’d go after a debriefing gone wrong in the Triskelion.
She’d even gone to the old base in Jersey that HYDRA had blown to pieces, maybe he had gone there.
But Clint was nowhere to be found. So, in the end, she’d taken one of SHIELD’s jets and flown out to Waverly, Iowa to see if she couldn’t find anything there. The barn doors are closed, winter is coming anyways, and the trucks and cars are all parked under the garage to keep them from rusting. She parks the Quinjet out in the field Clint has set up for that specific purpose (so they don’t ruin any of Laura’s crops when they come and go all the time, he’d told her), and walks the rest of the way up to the farmhouse.
It’s eerily quiet around. Usually, there are birds in the trees, and sometimes she’s even lucky to catch a deer or two running across some of the outer fields. But not today. It’s like she’s stepped into someplace where something terrible has happened.
Putting the key in the door, she unlocks the first and the second door, before stepping inside. She kicks the dirt off her shoes on the mat, like Laura always told her to. The sight that greets her inside makes her heart sink. There’s white sheets covering all the furniture, and everything is immaculate. If Clint had left in a rush, he wouldn’t have done anything to the house. But he’s cleaned and tidied, and he’s even done the last dishes that somehow always spend the night in the sink.
She knows immediately as she walks around inside that he’s not planning on coming back. On the fridge, she finds a drawing of a butterfly that Lila had made for her, all those years ago, when they’d come here to hide from Ultron. She moves the magnet out of the way to pick the drawing up and look at it again. Light shines through the window, and she sees that there’s something written on the other side of the drawing.
It’s Clint’s scrawny writing, in soft pencil, something she knows she can erase when she’s seen it.
“I’m not coming home, don’t look for me.”
She feels her chest tightening at the sight of the words, and pulls out the kitchen chair instinctively, sitting down in it. She knows that if she goes looking for Clint’s weapons hidden around the property, she won’t find anything. The big four wheel drive van that Clint uses when he needs to go far is gone as well, and she has no doubt that SHIELD will find it abandoned on the side of a road where Clint will have changed transport methods.
He should have been by their side in Wakanda. Maybe he would have been able to make a difference, but he’d been adamant - he was retired. He had gotten out of this life. He’d made it, and he had kids to raise now. He was going to grow old, be happy and Natasha had been so proud of him.
And now, the life he had fought so hard to get out of alive and in one piece had claimed everything he’d ever fought for.
And he hadn’t even known what was happening when it had happened.
She looks down at the drawing of the butterfly and smiles sadly at it, the pain and sadness radiating throughout her whole body. If only she could tell him that they’re trying to figure something out. That they’re going to keep fighting.
But, if Clint has decided to go off grid, there’s nothing she can do.
Send me one of these prompts and I’ll write something ♥
