Here's the next chapter, sorry it's been a while but school's been crazy with midterms and a big drill meet to prepare for. I'll try to have the next one up sooner. Leave a review to let me know what you think!

Clint was still sitting in his car waiting when Natasha returned about an hour later, his stomach still uneasy after seeing her earlier that afternoon. So much about her had changed since he'd been away, he could see it in her. There was a new kind of sadness behind her eyes from a wound much fresher than the lingering wounds of her past, a wound he'd been the cause of. But there was a new kind of strength in her too, but that was Natasha. No matter how hard you tried to break her, she always got back up again, and she always came back stronger for it.

Natasha saw Clint's car still parked halfway down the street when she pulled into the driveway and her heart rate immediately skyrocketed. She knew he would be watching her like a, well like a hawk, not unsurprisingly. She cursed in russian under her breath as she stepped out of the car and went to go open the door for her son. The energetic little guy was already squirming to unbuckled his seatbelt when she got there and was climbing down out of the car in no time.

"Hey!" She called out in mock anger as his small hand snatched her keys and, giggling, ran up to the door. With a smile on her face she chased after him, scooping him up in her arms when she caught up to him and holding him at the perfect height to let him unlock the door. He needed both hands to turn the doorknob and she dropped him back onto the floor when the door swung inward, letting him run off to grab a snack while she went to grab his backpack from the car. In that moment, as she slipped into her routine with her son, the newly arisen Clint Barton slipped from her mind. She closed the front door behind her without a thought to what he was thinking from his own car down the road. Though she wasn't the least bit surprised when she heard, moments later, frantic knocking on her front door.

"I'll get it momma!" Her son shouted from the kitchen, a fork clattering onto the wooden table.

"No." She snapped, not harshly but firmly as he came rushing around the corner. "Honey, I want you to go upstairs to your room and close the door okay?"

She saw the confusion on his face but he listened to her instructions regardlessly. Natasha often asked him to go to his room when she needed to discuss work in her home, so he was more or less used to it. What he wasn't used to was the obvious nervousness on his mother's face and in her voice, it made him uneasy too.

"Natasha please talk to me." Clint's voice put her on edge as she waited for her son to make his way upstairs. She took a deep breath as she heard the door click shut upstairs. "Natasha!" Clint knocked again on the door, harder this time, and she turned and swiftly yanked it open like she was breaching a room because this right here took just as much courage, if not more.

"Would you keep it down? For Christ's sake I have nosy neighbors who already don't like me." Natasha snapped, taking Clint aback. She expected him to take a step back, but he didn't and they stayed for a moment, just tensely staring at one another standing barely a foot apart.

"I'm sorry, Nat." He said quietly, looking away from her. Looking her in the eyes was more difficult than he'd anticipated, his own shame and regret left him hunched in front of her, eyes fixed on her pale hand resting on the doorknob.

"So I've heard, but if you've got nothing new to say, you have to go now." She wanted to sound angry, but mostly she just sounded sad. When Clint hesitated, she began to close the door but Clint put his hand up to stop her.

"The kid, Natasha… is he…?" He couldn't finish the sentence, the words caught in his throat and he couldn't quite get them out. The second he saw the boy get out of the car his heart nearly stopped, he felt dizzy and sick. His hands shook when he went to open the door and he was worried for a moment that his legs might not hold him up when his feet were on the ground, but he needed to talk to her. He needed to know.

"You've been away a long time, Clint." She said softly, now it was her who couldn't meet his eye. But that was all Natasha needed to say for Clint to understand. He felt his knees buckle under him and grabbed on to the doorframe for support as the weight of her words fully hit him.

A son. He had a son. With Natasha. It felt like his whole world had been shattered.

While Natasha had resolved to be cold with him, she felt her toughness melt away looking at Clint. She may have been hurt by what he did, but she would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see that he had been hurting too. Stepping back, she opened the door a little wider.

"Come in." She sighed, forgetting her stubborn streak. Clint looked up at her now and she saw the one thing in his eyes that had confounded her for so long, the one thing that it took her years to figure out: love.

He followed Natasha inside to the kitchen and waited in silence as she poured two generous glasses of vodka from a bottle she'd had since she'd left Russia when she was 17. She only drank it on her darkest nights. And now, it seemed, her most trying day too.

"Sorry, but I don't think I can do this without a little help." She said before knocking back the astringent liquor and pouring another glass. Clint followed her lead and she refilled his glass as well. Clint took a seat on a tall stool and waited patiently for Natasha to speak first.

Though her first words weren't directed towards Clint at all, but rather to Steve.

"I'm really sorry this is so last minute, but I need you to come pick up my kid." She tried not to sound too tense, concentrating all her effort into keeping her voice steady when she could feel Clint's eyes on her.

"Natasha is everything okay? Are you in trouble?" Steve's concern was palpable, even over the phone.

"No, I'm fine. It's just that something came up and I need to deal with it. Please, you know I wouldn't ask unless it was important."

"Be there in 10." Steve hung up after that, racing to get to Natasha the minute he did. He had been Natasha's lifeline when Clint 'died', he helped hold her together when her world fell apart and she would be forever indebted to him for it.

They waited in silence for Steve. Clint wanted nothing more than to see his son, but he knew he had to work this out with Natasha first and he didn't question her decision to keep him out of it all for now. She left to go grab a bag of her son's things she kept packed for emergencies, always ready to pick up and leave on a moment's notice and then went upstairs to explain that his Uncle Steve was going to come pick him up. His eyes lit up when she said his name, he couldn't wait to see Steve.

"C'mon kiddo." Natasha said nudging him out of his room when she heard a knock at the door. He raced down the stairs to go open it.

"Uncle Steve!" He shouted, jumping into his arms.

"Holy smokes!" Steve pretended to struggle catching him. "You are getting bigger and bigger everytime I see you little man."

"I owe you one, thank you." Natasha sounded relieved as she handed Steve her kid's bag.

"What's going on Nat, you in trouble again?" He said, lowering his voice.

"No, nothing like that it's just…" She stopped talking when she saw Clint appear at the end of the hall. Even if he couldn't meet his son, Clint was desperate to just see him, even if only as he was leaving. He left his post in the kitchen just to get a glimpse, the last thing he was expecting was to Steve Rogers standing in the doorway.

"Clint?" The shock of seeing the dead man walking almost made Steve drop the kid in his arms. He looked back at Natasha, his eyes wide and questioning.

"Look, I'll explain it all as soon as I know myself what's going on okay? But please, right now I just need you to leave." Steve heard the urgency in her voice and trusted her enough to do as she wanted.

"It's, uh, good to see you." Steve said somewhat uneasily to Clint before turning to leave.

"You too." Clint replied absently, his eyes focused narrowly on the blond boy fiddling with Steve's buttons but in another moment, they were both gone. The click of the door closing felt more like a nail in a coffin.

"What's his name, Natasha?" He asked, though she seemed saddened by the question and sighed.

"His name's Clint." She admitted softly. "I named him after you."

"Jesus fuck, Natasha." He felt hot tears swell in his eyes, coming back to this was overwhelming. He had come to terms with leaving Natasha a long time ago, but he never knew what else he had walked out on too. He felt so angry and ashamed, he couldn't believe Natasha would even look at him after what he did.

She struggled to remain calm as she ushered him back to his seat in the kitchen. Natasha saw his pain and wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around him but something was holding her back; so she remained seated next to him at the island countertop.

"I found I was pregnant while you were first away. You know, I didn't even think I could get pregnant, doctors had always told me it was impossible. This wouldn't be the first time you and I had done the impossible though." She chuckled at that. "I didn't know what I wanted to do. Mother was never in my career plan, and I was scared. You were supposed to come home in three weeks, I figured that, whatever I decided, I would tell you then, in person. A week later they told me you were dead."

"Natasha, I had no idea. Please, you have to understand, if I had known…"

"It's okay, it's my fault I never told you. I thought if I told you, you would want me to keep the baby. You'd always wanted kids, even if you'd never admitted it to me, I always knew. I didn't want to hurt you. But when you died everything changed. That kid, our kid, was part of you and I couldn't bear to lose you a second time. No matter the consequences, no matter how hard it was going to be for me, I couldn't let that part of you go. I thought Fury would've told you, I thought wrong it seems."

Clint couldn't find the right words to express what he was thinking so Natasha kept talking and, though it might've been painful for him to hear, the story she told was raw and honest.

"I took your death pretty hard, harder than I'd like to admit. I swore I would never let anyone have so much control over me again, I spent years shutting everyone out, even you, just to feel safe and free and in control. Then you came along and, while I don't think you ever broke those walls, you painstakingly scaled them, until you were safely behind them right next to me.

The denial stage was probably the worst, I drove everyone mad trying to convince myself you were still alive. Made those poor desk jockeys work 12 hour shifts looking for any evidence you had made it out, but I guess Fury was thorough enough to fool me, to fool all of us.

God your funeral sucked, I'm sorry. Sitting there listening to people drone on and on about you, people who didn't even know you. Honestly, they just should've let me plan the whole affair, you would've hated it. All pressed shirts and dark suits, heavy makeup and those stupid little hats. Fuck me, SHIELD needs a better policy for that shit."

Clint relaxed as Natasha spoke, even chuckling at her comical expression of disdain at his funeral.

"A few days earlier I had planned our own little send off for you, something just for the people closest to you. That old bar you so love, I kinda kicked everyone but your old bartender buddy out for the night. A bunch of us: me, Fury, Coulson, Steve and his merry band of misfits, Bobbi, Kate, all of us. We sat around drinking copious amounts of scotch and whiskey and just talked about you. Stories, mostly. Jesus did I learn a thing or two about you. But also the things we'd left unsaid, our regrets too. It was the first time I really accepted you weren't coming home again, and the first time I let myself cry over you. Though it was far from the last. I feel like I should point out that I didn't partake in the drinking, ole' Junior's defect free as far as I'm aware.

Your death was so sudden, but oddly enough, you seemed to slip out of my life so gradually. All your shit in the apartment hung around, for a long time I couldn't bear to get rid of any of it. I slept in our bed, and it felt so much bigger and emptier knowing you were never going to next to me in it again. Sometimes I would sleep on your side, with your pillow, because it still smelled like you. But the more I did, the more it smelled like me, until you faded from it all together.

I did the same thing with your shirts, sleeping in them one by one until the memory of you was replaced by my own misery. It wasn't long before I couldn't take living there anymore. Everything I saw, everything I touched reminded me of you. The counter I would sit on while you make me breakfast. That stupid old coffee maker you spent more time fixing than you did actually using it. The table where you'd work on your weapons. The couch where we would lie intertwined after a mission, just talking. The balcony where we'd laugh or cry depending on our moods. And I'm pretty sure we'd had sex on every square inch of that tiny place. Your memory haunted me and so I moved.

The baby thing didn't help anything either. I was 22 and terrified of myself and of my future. The thought of raising a kid on my own kept me up at night, I was constantly second guessing myself and there was no one else who ever understood me like you did. Who could ever comfort me or make me feel safe like you did. With you I looked to the future hopefully and expectantly. Without you, my depression often overwhelmed me and seeing any future became a trying task.

When Clint was born I was alone. I had slowly cut everyone out of my life. I quit SHIELD, I moved, I was too ashamed to let anyone help me. Only Steve managed to put up with all my bullshit through it all, he's stubborn like you, but he was overseas when I went into labor. Doctors and moms always warn you about the pain of giving birth, but I conquered physical pain a long time ago.

When I first held our son in my arms I completely broke down. He looked so much like you, his nose, his eyes, his little wisps of blond hair. I saw so much of him in you, and I felt like I had lost you all over again. My doctor said I was full of surprises; seemingly unbothered by pushing a human being out of me, I cried like a little girl when it was all over. He was so beautiful, he still is.

I had really severe postpartum depression though, but hey, it's not like I was doing too hot prepartum either. In all honesty, it was the first time since I had been in the Red Room that I seriously contemplated killing myself. The thought of raising this kid without you seemed like a monumental task and one I felt completely inept to do. I never learned how to take care of kids growing up, I learned how to kill them. I am such a colossally fucked up human being, Clint. I've lived through so much pain and fear and done horrible, unforgivable things. I'm not a good person, I never have been. I thought if I died, someone better than me would have a chance to help make him into something good for this world. I believed that, like most people, he would be better off without me in this world.

How am I possibly qualified for child rearing? How am I supposed to teach my son right from wrong when I don't even know, when I don't even care to know? I'm supposed to teach my kid to be a man of honesty and integrity when I lie for a living, when I kill people and torture people for a living. What do I say when he asks what mommy does at work? What do I tell other parents? When he asks why I'm gone how do I explain what I am? How do I explain why he doesn't have a father? Fuck, I'm still trying to find the answers to all these questions and more.

Like what happens if my enemies were to know he exists? Another reason I thought about killing myself is that it would remove the target on his back. He was born in the freaking crosshairs and it's my fault. If anyone knew I had a son, there's no telling what they would do to him to exact their revenge on me. I couldn't bear the thought of that, I still can't. It's something I worry about day and night.

Clint's the best thing that ever happened to me though. Despite everything, he's the one thing I will never regret and he's the one thing that's kept me fighting this whole time. And, if being in love with you has taught me anything, it's that some people are worth the pain and heartbreak and doubt that comes along with it. You were, and I'd like to think you still are.

I'm sorry for throwing you out this morning, this whole thing isn't easy for me. I just got used to not having you in my life only to have you show up on my doorstep. But, that's my story. The short and sweet version of the last five years. What's yours?"