Budapest

Clint - Pause

A/N: If you're still reading this, you are an angel and deserve all the cookies ♥

Clint couldn't stop stealing glances at Natasha out of the corner of his eye. He half expected her to disappear on him again, as if she was never real to begin with, a mirage, a ghost, a dream.

Then his questing fingertips would wander, strayed over her kneecap, brushed across her shoulder, and that quick snap of surprise shocked through him again, a bolt of electricity that jolted him back to reality with all of its bittersweetness. Natasha was still with him. She was still here.

"Nervous?" Clint said and he wasn't sure if he was asking her or asking himself at this point.

"No," Natasha replied without looking at him.

Of course not, he thought.

She eyed him then added, "You?"

He shrugged into a false bravado he didn't feel. "Nah."

"You're a terrible liar."

He grinned. "Yep."

Natasha's gaze shifted forward again. And Clint did his best to ignore the pang of loss when she stopped looking at him, when she steadily closed herself off. He could do nothing to stop it.

God, what he would give to get past her damned poker face, resolute as stone, to get inside her head, the one place he couldn't reach her, couldn't help her. The one place she couldn't escape, couldn't run away from.

Standing beneath the bridge on the outskirts of Budapest, they were to meet Fury at noon. Clint couldn't help but recognize the sheer irony of the moment. This crossing over into a new territory, on the brink of change and commitment and trust that was so terrifying, a leap of faith that could leave Natasha broken and in pieces all over again if it wasn't the right move. And it would be entirely his fault for convincing her to give it a chance.

While this bridge would close the distance between Natasha's old life and the possibility of a new one, Clint felt it.

A chasm was beginning.

Natasha was chiseling away, carving with elbows and cool glances and subtle shifts of her weight away from him. Putting herself out of reach until there was fresh distance between them.

It started when Clint contacted Fury and he'd been biting his tongue to prevent repeated apologies ever since. There was nothing to apologize for. This was what she needed, what he had promised her. A home. A place to belong. A place to come back to when the world was closing in around her, dogging at her heels, ripping her to shreds.

But if it meant Natasha didn't shut him out like this, Clint would apologize over and over again. He would never stop apologizing.

It wouldn't do any good, he knew that. So he kept his mouth shut. The last thing Natasha needed was an apology.

"I'm not turning you in, you know," Clint said. Again.

She would believe him. Or she wouldn't. There was no convincing her either way. Words were useless to her. She had been fed too many lies to believe words, promises, apologies, all broken and retracted and forgotten in the span of a heartbeat without a second thought. But Clint found himself explaining, promising, talking with those empty, useless words anyway in a clumsy and awkward effort to close that ever-widening gap.

Natasha studied the river, lapping at the brown earth and scattered pebbles like dirty little stars, touched by the silver foam of the rushing and retreating water.