Author's Note: Here's to the end!

It had been a terrible week.

There was a hostage situation. And then there wasn't.

Clint wished he could it was because they saved all seventeen of those unwitting participants in the madman's sick game, but that wasn't the case. He wished he could block out the horrified screams of the friends and family and spectators.

There was absolutely nothing worse than the screams of those whose hearts were concaving in a visible wound. The space where their loved ones used to be became like a black hole. The sound was a mixture of denial and reality, of hope folding in on itself so rapidly it took your breath away. The sound was charged, vibrating down his spine and along his nerves until it engulfed him completely. Shock and anguish raced across his back and down his arms while his heart dropped into his stomach and a lump grew in his throat.

He couldn't draw his eyes away from the absolute desolation blooming like some god-awful flower of death in front of him. He watched as these people's worlds were thrown into a complete stop, lurching them off their feet and onto the ground. He watched them grab for solace, trying to save themselves from the agony that was already enveloping them neck-deep. He watched as they drowned when they found that there was never any solace to be had.

They didn't understand. Death was for other people.

He wished he could tell them that he didn't understand either, even after all these years of watching friends disappear more permanently with every shovelful of dirt, and seeing people choke on their own blood as they did nothing but wait for the inevitable shadow of death. But he didn't say anything because he couldn't tell if that was comfort or torment.

There was a steady throbbing moan lying over the whole crowd, and it did nothing to capture the true extent of their anguish.

He couldn't watch them break apart anymore.

You could patch up broken bones, cuts, and bruises, but you couldn't mend a broken heart. Some scars never healed.

The local authorities were quick to take control of the scene. The Avengers were only needed for saving the day.

The six of them somehow reached the Avengers Tower, though if Clint were to think back on it, he wasn't able to remember how they got there. Grief had them all by the throat, constricting their airways and cutting off their voices.

Clint went straight to his room, stripping off his gear as he made his way to the bathroom. The force of the water on the tiled shower floor filled his ears, and he desperately tried to let it drown out the screams.

Dead bodies were awfully heavy for something so empty, he idly thought, watching the blood drip down his arms in pink starbursts. He wished it was his. He wished he had never had to see the inside of another person. He wished they stayed as whole and unbroken and strong as they were supposed to be. That way, he could pretend that it was a person inside, not mortality.

He wished death was something more negotiable.

He stayed until the water turned cold, feeling the cool tile on his forehead.

He stayed until he was numb.

When he finally gathered the will to get out of the shower, he found Natasha waiting for him on his bed, smelling strongly of her shampoo and dripping water onto his bedspread. She was completely dwarfed by her sweatshirt, looking so tiny and delicate.

Grief made everything cold, and he felt the icy air curl around his arms through his thin cotton t-shirt. Natasha's eyes dropped to the ground, her eyebrows pulling together and lips tightening. "I can't get the sound out of my head," she said softly, and something about the lilting way her voice wrapped around the words, delicate and cracked, made something deep inside him shudder.

He stood before her feeling vulnerable, stripped of his defenses as he wrapped his arms around himself and watched her.

She looked up at him and he knew she was a spider web of cracked glass, and it would only take one little tap for her to shatter. So he didn't bother with placations. "Me neither."

Natasha stood. "The others are waiting for us."

It was something the Avengers found themselves doing when a particular mission snapped their control. When the bodies were too numerous, and the blood felt like paint on their skin. They would all gather together and watch a movie. Something stupid. Something light and funny and something that ran over the horrible memory of that day like a razor.

The others were already there when they got to the common area. Upon his and Natasha's arrival, Thor jumped up. "Good. You have come. Clint—" for they were steadily teaching him the simplicity of first names "—our comrades have appointed us the task of gathering nourishment for the night."

"Or, you know, popcorn," Tony suggested.

Clint was too numb to really care about anything, so he sighed gently and padded toward the kitchen. "Alright. Come on, big guy."

Thor watched the bag spin around the plate in the microwave with relentless fascination. Clint leaned against the counter with his arms crossed, counting the tiles on the ground to keep his mind off the screams that had yet to let his tormented mind rest.

"How does it make the food warm so quickly?" Thor questioned after a while, nose still level with the window.

Clint was startled out of his reverie, the question catching him off-guard. "Oh. Er…I'm not sure. There are these things called microwaves—"

"Yes," Thor agreed, "this contraption."

Clint frowned. "No, I think it's an actual thing, like inside the box, and the box uses the microwaves to heat up the food or something. I don't know. You'll have to ask Stark."

"Your world is wonderful. How is it that you aren't questioning how it all works all the time?"

Because seventeen people have died and the world didn't even pause. "Take it for granted, I suppose."

Thor seemed to pick up on the whole different string of conversation underlying Clint's words, and drew his gaze away from the popping bag in the microwave to study him. "It was terrible what happened today."

The obviousness of this fact nearly made Clint laugh. "Yeah."

Thor laid a hand on his shoulder in quiet camaraderie.

The beeping of the microwave spurred them both into action. Thor retrieved the bag and Clint reached toward the cabinet to find a bowl. They said nothing as the popcorn was being poured, but the air between them seemed devoid of words, and their mere companionship filled up the empty space.

Upon their return, Tony pressed a button on the remote to start the movie. Thor got the easy chair, for he was notorious for taking up more than his apportioned space with sprawling legs and flung-out arms, so Clint dropped into the space between Tony and Bruce on the couch. Natasha grumbled on the other side of Tony, clearly disgruntled at having to give up more of her space. Steve was staring with rapt attention at the TV from his spot on the floor.

The screams were laying over them all like a thick wool blanket; slowly suffocating them all as they pinned them with their vicelike grip.

Clint locked down all but the most basic level of thought. He stowed away all feelings and only let himself dwell on what was happening in that exact moment. No sooner. No later.

Tony made inane comments all through the movie, rating certain anatomical regions of the actresses, telling the actors where they could shove different objects, musing about how much more bearable the movie would be with a fine coat of alcohol. At a stupid profession of love between the two main characters, he took Clint's hand and said, "I feel the same about you, Barton. I didn't know how to tell you this before." (to which Clint responded, "If you don't get your fucking hand off my person in the next point seven seconds, I will personally dropkick you to Africa." and Steve cut in with a "If you don't fucking shut up in the next point seven seconds, I'll personally dropkick you both to Africa. How 'bout that?")

Clint never appreciated Tony's humor more than in that moment. Tony didn't know how to deal with suffering, so he repainted it with sarcasm and snark and sealed it tightly so no emotions could get through the cracks. It was something to take people's minds off the pain, and it worked. There was a silent gratitude between them, understood, but not addressed.

When the credits started rolling, Tony recruited Steve and Natasha to help him decide on another movie, while he sent Thor on a quest to retrieve a bag of potato chips from the kitchen. Bruce turned to Clint, gentleness swelling across his face like the waves of the ocean. "How're you holding up?"

Fine. The answer was on his tongue, almost spilling into the air.

But he looked into Bruce's calm, knowing gaze and said instead, "Been better."

Bruce rubbed the bridge his nose under his glasses, like the beginning of a headache was planting its roots in his mind. "God awful, what happened to those people. Kinda makes you wish you'd clung to obscurity a little bit better."

That was all there was to it, so Clint just nodded in agreement.

Bruce patted his leg, looking every bit the surrogate father he was to the Avengers. "As long as it doesn't eat you up, Clint. Stuff like this—It's easy to get caught up in the what-ifs. Don't do it. This was in no way your fault, and you're still every bit the man I know you are."

Clint tucked the words away, to mull over when the pain tore him up anew. "Thanks, Banner."

Stark stood up then, plastic case clutched in his fist. "We have found it," he announced. "The quest is over. A perfect movie has been found."

Clint didn't even know what it was. He didn't remember. His mind was quieting under the thrum of living and breathing and existing each and every one of the Avengers exuded; a gift they didn't even know what they were giving. It lulled Clint out of the ocean of grief and onto shores of comfort.

He didn't know how he fell asleep, or how the nightmares resisted germinating into weeds of torment in his brain, but the next thing he knew, he was being shook awake by a warm, gentle hand. "Hey, Clint. It's almost three a.m. Don't you think you should go to bed?"

Clint blearily looked around him, knowing with utmost certainty that there was something he was supposed to be remembering, something important—

He remembered.

He sagged against the couch as the weight of grief collapsed on him once again.

"Hey, Clint, there was nothing you could do."

Clint had forgotten he wasn't alone. He looked up to see Steve with concern creased into his face. He offered up a sardonic grin. "That's just it, isn't it?"

Steve sat down next to him. "I suppose so."

"What do you do when you—" fall apart lose control break into a million pieces "—deal with something like this?"

Steve seemed to struggle with himself. He seemed to try and dredge up that raw part of him that felt so much and hurt even more, because feeling and hurt were practically synonyms to someone like Steve. "I would be the person to ask, wouldn't I?" His words left no room for pity, but Clint fell it stir within him anyway.

"I don't deal well, I can tell you that much. I work too much. I try not to think about it. I try to pound it out of me," Steve said with a tight voice.

"I can't stop thinking about it," he told him, the words feeling pinched with confession.

Steve clapped him on the back. "That's the thing to do. You grieve and move on. You aren't weak for feeling for those people. That's human." He seemed to gather his thoughts, caught somewhere in between memories. "They become less like ghosts and more like angels after a while. Pain is one thing that will always crumble over the passage of time."

Clint folded up the reassurance deep into his memory. The fact of the matter, he was realizing after years of death tearing holes into the walls of his soul, is there was no quick fix for loss. Time was the only plaster. It eroded at the rawness and patched up the empty spaces, but it was so far away.

"Go to bed. They say things are better in the morning, yeah?"

"Whoever said that is a lying bitch," Clint said ruefully, prodding an abrupt laugh out of Steve.

Steve clapped his back again and helped him up. "You'll get there."

Clint hoped that was the case.

They parted ways at the door with irony-coated words of "goodnight."

Clint got to his room, and stumbled across his floor, afraid that the lights would draw everything into focus when all he wanted was a reprieve. His shins found the edge of his bed and he tipped facedown onto the mattress.

He screwed his eyes shut against the harsh reality of the day's events, and tried to find some sort of peace.

To his surprise, it came quickly.

Natasha's understanding. Thor's camaraderie. Tony's attempts to suffocate the horror with jokes. Bruce's advice. Steve's empathy.

He held his team close to his heart. He held his little family and their little quirks, their idiosyncrasies, their fighting and laughing and gentle nudges and warm smiles and reaching hands and good memories around him like a loving embrace until the pain stopped throbbing through him and something warm and peaceful evened him out.

He held them to him until he fell asleep.

He would hold them to him for the rest of his life.

Author's Note: I have no excuse for my absence. But better late than never, yeah? Anyway, this was an angsty end to an angsty story, and I'm a little sad to let this story go, but here it is. To everyone who's stuck with this story since the beginning: you have no idea how grateful I am for your kind words and criticism. I have such a hard time putting my work out there, but with such kind people like you guys, it's easy. And I thank you so much for it. If anyone has prompts or ideas you want me to write out, just let me know, and I'll get another story out there soon.

Thank you so much, and have a great day!