Rainwater courses over exposed skin, plastering his hair to his head. From the rooftops he watches it, a sleeping city bathed in neon beneath him. Even in the dark Tokyo glows and the tumbling rain clears the streets of pedestrians, increasing the flow of taxis as it tumbles from the sky.

It has been hours since he last moved, since he last saw any sign of movement in the streets immediately below, but he remains in position. He is a shadow, a gargoyle, a ghost, unnoticed and undetected amidst the hustle of the city. Watching. Waiting. He is spoiling for a fight, waiting for an opportunity. It's been so long since he has existed in anything but the battle cry, the penetrating wound. His is a numb existence, a hopeless one, a reality in which he is simply marking time until a bullet ends his misery.

At the sight of half a dozen men streaming into the alley below him, the steady metronome of his heart picks up pace. They are heavily armed, dressed in uniform black, all of them members of the Yakuza. His target is among them, a target that he chose for himself, latest in a long line. It's a brave new world, tarnished and diminished, but new nonetheless.

He watches, tracking their movements like a bird of prey - fully aware of the wild irony in that thought; years as the Hawk brought him nothing but pain, nightmares and the taste of loss in his mouth. Only in this new life, the one in which he serves no master but himself, can he truly allow himself to be the predator that the veneer of civility held in check for so long.

Anticipation slumbers in his blood. Beneath the fabric of his gloves, his fingers twitch with the need to wrap around the handle of the katana sheathed at his side. Reaching up, he pulls the mask and hood over his face, finding a solace in the removal of his identity that the wet fabric cannot lessen. This is his moment. This is when the waiting pays off.

He drops silently from the rooftop, swinging nimbly from fire escape to fire escape until he lands lightly on the concrete with a subtle splash. The shadows hug him as he blends into them and he stalks his prey without a sound. Gasoline slick puddles shimmer, neon reflections rippling and reforming beneath his boots as he passes by. The world narrows down to the steady beat of his heart and the movement of the man in front of him. There is room for nothing but the reality of the moment.

He takes them out one by one, generating a quiet sort of chaos. He steps lightly and throws his blades with skill. The thrill is in the chase and he takes out the outliers without commotion, closing in on his real target. Barely breaking stride or losing breath, he leaves carnage in his wake, stoking the fire in his blood.

When he singles out the target and strikes, he does so with precision. The blade breathes a soft serenade as he slides it from its sheath, capturing pink and yellow ghosts in its blackened surface as it skewers its target. With near silent precision, he severs tendons to prevent escape, driving the man before him to his knees on the rain-slicked ground. Steel whispers across a throat and for a long moment all that exists is the magnetic pull of a pair of dark eyes that stare at him in disbelief. Rainwater dilutes the spillage. The soft gurgle of blood bubbling through a severed windpipe is the only sound.

Once the sight would have resonated within him on some level but now Clint feels nothing.

He swipes the blade across the sleeve of his armour with a metallic ring, cleaning the weapon and honing the edge of its blade in one simple motion before stowing it away. As his victim gurgles out his last breath, Clint tries not to fall headlong into the bottomless void where his emotions once resided. He pulls the hood from his head and removes his mask, baring his face to the night and the rain which claws at him like the demons he can never quite banish, like the cries of every person he has ever failed. The heavens are raining every one of them down on him now.

It has been years since what came to be known as the snap, but to Clint it seems like only moments. In the confusion that followed, nobody had known why it happened. The vanished were simply gone, erased, as if they never existed with only the heartache of those left behind to contradict the assumption.

For Clint, the moment he realised that they were gone resonates within him at a frequency that is too painful to look at even now. Facing up to life without those he had built his entire existence around, made every sacrifice for, had almost broken him, still is breaking him. On a moment by moment basis, he slips further away from the man he was.

He misses his family - both of them. After Leipzig he hadn't had many options; the team were in disarray and he had been locked up aboard the Raft awaiting a court martial for insubordination. Ross was ready to fry him and the only way out of it was to accept a house arrest and go home to the farm. It was a no-brainer. Clint signed the paperwork, made the deal and went home to his wife. He had given up a year and a half of his life to an enforced retirement, just to be there for them and, just as he regained his liberty and ability to move around as a free man, the life he wanted was pulled from his grasp.

Laura, Cooper, Lila and Nate: they were there one second, gone the next.

It burns when he thinks about it, hot and thick like lava, an itch under his skin that he can't scratch. It was just a normal day: sun on the back of his neck while he taught Lila how to shoot, watching with pride as she landed an arrow right in the centre of the target, listening to the birds sing in the trees and the boys calling to one another as they played catch. They'd gone to the park as a family, taken a picnic lunch, a football, Clint's old bow and arrows from a past life on the carnival circuit. He'd been enjoying the sunshine and the family time, already thinking of the bottle of wine he'd share with his wife when the kids were tucked up in bed ...

Then everything changed, changed when he turned his head for a second and Lila vanished into thin air. At first he'd thought it was a trick, that she'd scaled the tree and would be laughing at the panicked expression on his face. But then he turned to call out to Laura and she wasn't there either and neither were the boys. The picnic basket sat on the table, abandoned but he was alone. No family. No trace. No clues: nothing but ashes hanging on the air, caught by the breeze and carried away.

He remembers yelling their names, searching for them. He remembers the panic. He remembers the eerie silence where the birds had sang only moments earlier. Palpitations almost took him to his knees in the dappled sunlight beneath the oak and walnut trees. He could feel something inside him twisting, splintering as the silence deafened him and the enormity of his loss settled on his shoulders. There had been a tidal wave building in him, a scream that would howl the sun into hiding, and in the undertow he had reached for the only lifeline he had left, breaking the terms of his release in the process.

When he got his breathing under control, he made the call that he always made when things were fucked up beyond his comprehension. Seconds ticked by and Clint continued to drift further and further out of alignment with the universe. He held the phone to his ear while it rang, and rang, but no-one picked up. Not Fury. Not Hill.

The pain has never lessened. He deals with it all the only way he knows how - by pushing it away, there's nothing else to do.

Clint fell hard; he fell fast, dropping from the radar only to surface months later with blood on his hands and bodies at his feet. He found himself a mission, taking it upon himself to clear out the rot that remained. Half the population of the world gone and still the taint that caused pain and suffering to others remained. Clint became the animal in order to hunt it, the very definition of an avenger.

Unable to find his way out of the pit that his grief dragged him into, he couldn't reach out to anyone he had known before, couldn't look for Natasha or pick up the phone to try and reach Steve. It wasn't his place. He wasn't a hero any more: Clint Barton was a creature of the in-between, too many sharp edges for people to be safe around him. He couldn't trust himself around other people so he went it alone. Grief and rage swallowed him whole.

He wants revenge for what happened to his family, wants someone to pay for all that he has lost. That's what he's been doing in Tokyo, making people who trade in suffering pay for their actions. They might not be responsible for his personal situation but that doesn't mean they deserve his mercy. Not that he has any to offer. Mercy is a thing of the past, a character trait that he no longer has use for.

After a moment or two in quiet contemplation, he opens his eyes to stare up at an empty sky. His pain is still there, fuel to the fire of his rage. He feeds on it. Beneath a sky bleached starless by neon, the entire hidden majesty of the universe, he feels only dread at the thought of returning home. For Clint the concept of home no longer exists.

He feels the presence before he hears the click of a heel on asphalt. Before he even turns, he knows who he will find. The rain drums gently on the umbrella that she holds over her head, the smell of expensive perfume and gunpowder taking him back to other places. "You shouldn't be here," he says to the night, not turning to face her.

He doesn't want her to see what he has become. He can't bear to see the look in her eye when she registers everything that has changed in him, even though she is one of only two women who have always been able to see past his faults when nobody else can.

"Neither should you," she replies. They let the silence stretch out, filling up with everything they haven't said to one another in the years since everything went to hell. The ache in his chest as he hears her speak reminds him how much he misses her.

Clint knows that some of the Avengers came home from Wakanda, that Natasha has probably been tracking the pattern of his attacks for months, maybe years. She's too sharp to be thrown by the change in his weaponry, too astute to miss the signs that he is the one at work. She had known him well enough to stay away, that if and when he was able to come back to them he would make contact.

When he turns to look at her, Natasha is different - as much ghosts as shadows, as much darkness as light. The black trench coat and umbrella shield her from the glow of the city. Her skin is pale and her hair, longer now and swept back off her face into a french braid that hangs over her shoulder, is mostly red again with only the ends remaining blonde. Her eyes hold his, no judgement, no expectations.

Her presence stirs emotions in him that he is better off without.

"What are you doing here Nat?" he asks.

They're too exposed, standing in the middle of the street with a rapidly cooling body leaking blood into the puddles on the road. The rain lands on his skin like holy water and taps out a rhythm on her umbrella. If he listens to it closely enough it almost sounds like Morse code.

"We think we've found a way to undo it," she says finally.

Something inside Clint splinters as he absorbs the words.

Natasha stands very still, steady. Her green eyes hold his, calm, observing him with a patience that he doesn't deserve. In spite of his actions, the brutality that he has shown, she has never feared him, not really. Even when they were enemies, they had been kindred. He had seen something in her that meant he couldn't take her life.

She has left him alone all this time, watching from afar as he spiralled, why come to him now?

"We think we've found a way to bring them all back."

She loves his family as fiercely as if they are her own. Laura is like a sister to her; the kids are the niece and nephews she will never have. His heart rate picks up and he can't deny that seeing his partner in front of him for the first time in years heals him in some way that he can't fathom, but with the healing comes an agony he can't describe - possibility.

Rain pummels his face and shoulders, each drop landing like a fist. Pain grips him and he feels lightheaded, emotions colliding as he processes her words. Is it possible?

"Don't do this …" His voice comes out raw, an edge to it that speaks of his reluctance to engage with what she's saying. He can't afford what she's selling; he won't survive the loss twice. "Don't give me hope."

Reaching out, she waits for him to place his hand in hers. Clint is surprised to find that he is only a couple of steps away, much closer than he was at the start of their conversation. Even through the leather of his glove he can feel the strength of her grip. She draws him closer so that he is shielded from the downpour by her umbrella, lifting it higher to accommodate his height. For the first time in five years, his fingers gripped tightly in hers, her eyes on his, Clint realises that Natasha feels like home.

Sincerity fills her gentle smile and floods her eyes as she looks up at him. Her thumb skates over the back of his leather covered knuckles. The response comes softly, as if all the agonies the world has inflicted upon him, as well as those he has inflicted upon himself, are somehow hers to apologise for. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you it sooner."

"You're sure?" he asks, not sure that there is enough humanity in him to believe. Hope isn't something he's capable of. He has seen too much of the misery that the world can inflict on people. To lose them all once was bad enough but to have his fragile hopes shatter will be unbearable.

She tilts her head slightly, and shrugs her shoulder. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't think we had a real shot."

It's not a promise but it's good enough for him. He knows her well enough to know when she believes what she's saying and Natasha believes. Clint lets himself nod his agreement, tightens his grip on her hand, letting her anchor him to something more tangible than his rage.

Together they turn and walk away, the rain continuing to fall around them. They are on a jet out of the city before the night is over.