do not pity the dead; pity the living.

He dies first.

Everyone always expects these things to be a big deal. Superheroes to die worthy deaths. To go out fighting in a beautiful, final act of self-sacrifice, perhaps, drowned in goodbyes, draped in flags, worlds saved and peace at last. Dead with smiles on their faces. Not before coughing out some monumental last words, though, about power and responsibility and love and justice, to give hope to the little guy. Their words to echo though eternity, to be quoted and misquoted for thousands of years to come. Worshipped as shining beacons of heroism, until their bones have turned to dust. After too, sometimes.

Killed in action, they'll say later, under parades and flags and fireworks. A medal of valour, definitely. A holiday to honour their memory, maybe. If they're popular enough.

They're built out of skin and bone and blood and guts, but no one expects them to die ordinary. To quietly fizzle out of existence, to be normal, if just in death. No one expects it to just be a random mission, a random target, a random bullet. A faceless nobody firing it, even though he regrets ever being born, later, in a dark sewer a few miles outside of Krasnodar.

She watches him get hit. She's watched him get hit a million times before, watched him bleed out for hours before they could get back-up, watched him cling on when all he could do was die. Watched him stumble across a war-zone, body littered with bullets, dragging his feet to the next safehouse – bow in hand, still covering her ass, still ten times better than any agent (any partner), even half-dead. Watched him pull through, time and time again.

They always pulled through.

But this is different. The way his body recoils, crumples, the way it falls to the ground, awkward and loose-limbed and wrong. The way her heart's suddenly in her throat, her vision blurred.

A shot through the head, dead before she reaches him, dead before he can say anything, before he hits the ground.

"Hawkeye is down."

The last conversation she remembers was him making fun of her for never watching Cujo. Promising to lend it to her the minute they got back from Burma, promising it'll "scare the living fucking bejesus outta you, I swear." She finds an old VHS tape in the depths of her duffel bag a few weeks later, the copy tattered and old and well-loved. A yellow sticky-note advises her to "Watch it with the lights on, princess," in familiar chicken-scratch writing that's barely legible. She almost throws the thing against the wall.

"Bring him back."

He just looks at her, a mixture of grief and sympathy in his eyes. Pity, too, she realises after a moment. The sentiment is unfamiliar, and it crawls along her skin, makes her sick.

"My lady," he says, carefully, like he's treading on broken glass (because he is), "I'm afraid that is not in my power. Nothing can bring back the – " he stops, swallows his words, looks at the floor. Doesn't say dead.

"The laws of nature are as unforgiving in Asgard as they are on Earth," he finishes instead, like that's enough.

"I see," he hears her say. She's gone before he looks up.

They never see her again.

She's on the other side of the world when they bury her best friend. She's too busy burying a knife in the gut of a drug lord, too busy dropping his entire security personnel around him. Too busy watching one of them beg for mercy before his throat is split open and he joins his friends on the floor.

They litter the ground like flies.

She's running down an alley somewhere south of Tangier, leaping over a trash can, crashing through a window, a family eating dinner staring at her open mouthed because she's sprinting through their house, when Steve gets choked up trying to say a few words about a man he barely even knew, thousands of miles away. Cameras flash, unforgiving, from every angle and Thor stands stoic, helmet in his hands, Fury a few paces behind. Tony's a good distance away, sitting in the very back, in jeans and a t-shirt and sunglasses and an uncharacteristic set to his jaw. His hand is stroking Pepper's hair, her head buried into his shoulder. Bruce is off somewhere, and no one's gone after him to bring him back. The 'other guy's' hard to track.

The world weeps. New York mourns the loss of a hero, sobbing in front of their TV sets.

She's panting, crouched in cover in the extraction zone when the speeches are done and they lower the casket into the ground. She lunges out at the one thug who's managed to elude her, beats him to a blood pulp, sits on his chest and disfigures his face until she dislocates a knuckle on his jaw, her fingernails caked with red. Steve lays a small bouquet of yellow flowers on the dirt.

They bury his bow with him.

She goes from mission to mission, flying herself, working alone, not returning to base for over a year. If she's a little more manic, a little less careful, a little less perfect in her hits, it's not enough to bench her. Before long, something else invades New York and the Avengers are down two members instead of one. Tony has long since abandoned his attempts to track her down, long since stopped trying to weasel her location out of Fury, who keeps tabs on her but lets her be. Wolverine fills in. She hears Spider-Man makes an appearance.

She runs and hides and kills and maims. It's not a cure, but it's as close as she ever gets.

A year later, there's just a simple blank headstone, in a small, nondescript graveyard, just outside Waverly. Extra precautions, she supposes, to keep the fans at bay. Soft marble rolls underneath her fingers.

Crouching, she sets the tape down onto the ground. "You probably want this back. I finally watched it." She sniffs. "It sucked ass, by the way." She pauses, palm pressed against the dirt. "Wuss."

"You're such a sap," she hears him say and almost smiles, almost snaps shut up, the ghost of his voice in her ear.

She falls too, a year after that.

There are no holidays to honour her, either. A second blank headstone joins the first (home is where the heart is).

That's just how it goes. Assassins come with expiry dates.