12 || bring her home

"LET'S GET OUR GIRL BACK."

-Clint's Family Farm, July 15, 2018-

Take care of her for me.

It had been months of trying to track down Clint, and those were the words that continue to haunt the former assassin as she headed back to the place that note had been left. Natasha had known Clint had broken into the Avengers database and files to check and see if his niece had lived, but she didn't know what to do with that note.

That note, which had been left in Clint's stupid scribbly handwriting and left on his kitchen counter, the man knowing that his family home was going to be the first place that Natasha looked for him. It had barely been a week since Thanos, five days after they had turned Alison loose in the world around them.

Take care of her for me.

Very ironic considering that she was ignoring all of their calls, barring a singular text back to Steve. Natasha knew that Alison was in New York– her IP address remained the same and Natasha knew that there was no other place for the young woman to go. Alison was 18, and there was no legal jurisdiction to keep her close to the Avengers, even with a Snapped guardian.

It was fine, Natasha figured. She would come back to the team eventually. She would take her time to figure her shit out, and then come back. And then her contact went radio silent, just like her uncle's.

Then the note took on a different meeting.

'Take care of her for me' meant finding Clint, trying to see if Alison had somehow stumbled her way to her uncle. Take care of her for me became trying to find Clint if it meant that Alison would come back, see that Clint and Tony were still there. That they cared.

'Take care of her for me' was finding the young woman, tracing a false trail up to Canada under the false narrative that Natasha was still looking for Clint, and finding the trail fruitless. It was seeing Tony's devastated face during one of the short and only calls she had with the man telling her that Alison was gone, that she had run to California to die away from the failures of her past.

Natasha didn't believe that. She couldn't believe that. Her gut insisted that it wouldn't be that simple, that there would be a note for more than just Tony to see. It didn't make any sense, and Natasha refused to think that it would be that simple.

She was so glad her gut was right.

It had taken some time, maybe too much time– but they had found her and her ominous messages she had left behind, and the last one scared Natasha down to the bone.

Take care of her for me.

The Black Widow couldn't exactly do that if Alison was dead, and for good this time. There was not a moment she could waste, and as soon as she had found Steve in the next room over and played the last video, it had been a race to the quinjet to try and get to Clint's family farm before it was too late.

"We can't waste anymore time." Nat stated, her eyes trained on the clock on her small cell phone. Steve was pressing the gas pedal on the car, the two racing through the empty field. Her mind was flustered, the hour it had taken to painstakingly make it through the video logs Alison had recorded echoing in the former assassin's mind.

She should've seen the signs. Should've checked in as soon as she had gotten the stupid and unspecified note from Clint. Maybe it would've prevented them from being exactly where they were now– hoping that they weren't too late (considering that the final log had been posted a few hours before).

"Goddamnit." The woman swore under her breath, her mind racing as the fear that they would be too late crept into her mind. This was uncommon for the woman who normally held all the secrets, knowing how everything was playing out even if those around her had no idea she knew.

That's how it was with Tony– with his stupid stubbornness to not pick up the burner phone Steve and Natasha had left for him. She knew that he would always leave a back door open for her to come home if she wanted, her access to FRIDAY always granted no matter their relationship.

That's how it was with Steve– who she had been beside for the past two years on the run from the consequences of the United Nations and the various governments who were out for their heads. There wasn't one time where she didn't know what his next step was, what he was doing, even when he dropped off the face of the earth to the others on the run with him. (She always knew he would find his way back, especially if he was leaving to check in on Bucky in Wakanda.)

And that's how it was with Clint– the man who had saved her, who had helped her clear some of the red that was smeared all over her ledger like blood. There wasn't a moment that she couldn't tell where his mind was on a mission. No hesitation in finishing his sentences (to the annoyance of the rest of the Avengers), no secrets kept between the two.

Well, so she had thought. Until she had met his niece on the battlefield for the very first time when Alison was but a teenager, until Clint had decided to drop off the edge of the earth and leave nothing but a morbid note behind for Natasha.

Take care of her for me.

How had she not ever thought of it during her time in believing there was more to the story? Returning to a place of comfort where no one dared to go near due to the pain it would bring them was a stroke of genius on Alison's part, and Natasha was actually upset at the fact that it had taken them hacking into the video logs to see it. To see her suspicions of Alison's life confirmed, and to find where she had sequestered herself away.

"I know." Steve stated, turning hard right down onto the path that led to Clint's house. The area unrecognizable as it was, the ruin of the snap making them fall into further decay than they already were. The super soldier swore that he used to know the way here, but with the abandoned cars on the side of the only street and crops burned to the ground, it felt like unfamiliar territory. There was no one around, probably running towards the cities or hunkering down with family in another location. Alison? She was neither. She was a dead woman, trying to hide herself in a place where she thought the Avengers would never find her.

But they had found her.

"We're almost there, Nat." The super soldier stated, looking at the passenger seat at Natasha's thin expression. He would be lying if he didn't say that he was worried. Seeing Natasha's haunted face as she came into the room simply stating they needed to be on a quinjet now,gripping a small note that Steve could tell was Clint's handwriting.

Steve didn't know how to feel. He had stayed by Natasha's side during her determination that there was something more to the story, that Alison wasn't just dead. Because, the former assassin thought, Alison wouldn't give up that easily- not ever, not when she had the powers of time travel on her side. It wouldn't be as simple as what Tony thought it was. Natasha couldn't believe that was Alison's end, not when she had the message that her former SHIELD partner had left for her.

It took a while until they found an unknown hacker in the encrypted Avengers channel, the young woman staying under the radar and smart about when she chose to try and disguise herself with the code that Tony had created (which Steve was somewhat confident Alison was taught how to circumvent). And it wasn't long after that they figured out that the hacker was Alison, due to her staying in the same place for an extensive amount of time. From there, Natasha was able to find the video logs after finding a way into her laptop.

"Sure." Nat responded, her voice hasty as her fingers tapped the side of her thigh with an anxiety she hadn't felt in a while. Not since she had been hopeful that finding Thanos would be the answer to getting everyone back– and she knew how that had turned out. "Steve, now would be the time to have a lead foot and not be an elderly man on the gas pedal." She stated dryly, her eyes trained on the road ahead.

Rolling his eyes at his friend's comment, Steve pressed down on the pedal, the car accelerating quickly as they barreled down the path towards Clint's farm. In what seemed like a blur, a couple of right turns and an obscene amount of gravel flying underneath the tires of the SUV that the quinjet had stored for emergencies, Steve slammed down on the brakes, parking right in front of the main house.

It didn't take long until the two stumbled up onto Clint's porch, memories of Thanksgiving's past and years of hidden reunions coming to light. The farm was eerily silent, the fields of golden colored wheat and dead stalks of corn whispering in the wind, causing a feeling of unease to crawl down the two Avenger's spines.

Reaching for the front door, expecting a fight, Natasha was surprised to have the wind knock the front door open for her with a resounding slam. That was worry number one– the front door was unlocked. Something common for the Barton household, but uncommon for the fact that a girl who didn't want to be found was residing there.

It gave Natasha a telltale feeling that something was wrong.

"Steve, check the inside of the house." Natasha muttered in a low voice, the small holographic phone that she had swiped from the Facility indicating that the laptop that had been hacking into the Avenger's channel lay inside of the home. "I'm not sure, but–"

"The door was unlocked." Steve stated plainly, turning to Natasha with a neutral expression. "The odds of that when Alison was looking to hunker down until she died are low." The super soldier saw Natasha nod in agreement, not backing down from her earlier statement. "It doesn't hurt to check."

"I have no idea what to expect." Natasha admitted, seeing Steve give a nod as he quickly scouted out the house. It was a few moments before he came back empty handed, his face a little paler than what it once was. "What is it?"

"The gun safe was open."

"Shit."

The dead and dried grass waved amidst the sprouts of a new spring's buds, the whisper of the wind being the only thing that Steve and Natasha could hear as they scrambled outside, ignoring the creaking sighs of the porch's slowly aging wood. The grass crunched under Natasha's hurried steps, one hand resting on her holster as she stalked forward.

The endless row of trees that led to the small lake by Clint's house was sprawled out before them, Natasha paying no mind to her leaving Steve a few paces behind as she continued to move forward. She had met Alison a few times on the farm, sure, but the places that she and Clint would sequester away for a few drinks away from Laura and the kids were probably very different than where Alison and her uncle had bonded.

A couple of hundred yards ahead of Natasha, the familiar swinging bench laced through two old willows on the Barton property creaking loudly in the wind. A makeshift archery range was to the left of the house, an empty picnic bench and a half played game of archery all that was left behind, the only proof of life.

Take care of her for me.

Well she couldn't exactly do that if the girl she was supposed to take care of was dead, now could she?

"Steve–"

"I can go towards the lake and search that way." It was as if he had read her mind, both of them wondering exactly what was the best way to divide and conquer the situation that they were currently in. A teenager hellbent on muttering vague phrases and mentioning people who were never in a SHIELD file or identified as a threat (which Natasha wasn't sure if it was code or something else entirely) and being determined to die before they got to her was... unpredictable to say the least.

Natasha moved forward towards the forest, eyes trained on the horizon as she wondered where exactly this girl could be hiding. The farm wasn't that big, and yet when you were hunting for a highly suicidal teenager (there truly wasn't any other way to put it) it was suddenly searching for a needle in a haystack.

Finding herself steps away from the willow swing Natasha knew Clint had installed at the request of Lila, she hesitated when her foot scuffed a hard object on the ground. Looking down, she saw the familiar model of a SHIELD issued gun, standard to have stored no matter the safe house location.

A gun that only Clint, Laura or Alison could have gotten access to, and the gun that most likely belonged in the safe that Steve had found opened. "Shit." Natasha murmured, looking down at the couple of paces that she had before the small clearing that she knew that both Clint and Alison favored those days in which they needed to have discussions about their lives that no prying ears could discover.

Her eyes scanning the scene, Natasha found just a few steps away from the gun, was Alison. There was no blood anywhere (a breath Natasha didn't even recognize that she was holding was exhaled in relief), the young woman most likely dropping the gun before she had the chance to do anything with it.

"Steve!"

Feeling the faintest of pulses, Natasha pulled out the syringe of the cocktail of drugs that Bruce had engineered to help stabilize Alison with the knowledge they had. All they had known was she was definitely malnourished, and in need of at least some form of souped up pain killer. As for the rest of what was bothering her, they were truly in the dark.

But there was no time to dwell on that uncertainty. That was for another time, and was an issue to be dealt with later on. Right now, all that mattered was that it wasn't too late. They had found Alison, by some miracle on this earth, and she was alive.

Natasha's hands shaked ever so slightly as she scrambled to find a vein, pushing the needle in and watching Alison's face twist up with pain. Steve, who was still scouring the other side of the Barton's fields, where the archery range and picnic tables lay empty, found himself by Natasha's side in a matter of seconds.

"Is– is she–"

"Barely." Natasha answered, breathless as she interrupted Steve before he could say the one thing both of them were dreading. The former assassin watched as a sigh of relief left Steve's mouth, the man not too sure what to say at that moment.

"What now?"

"Now? Now we do what I promised Clint."

Take care of her for me.

<~•~>

NO ONE MAY BE READING THIS FIC ANYMORE BUT IDC YALL I WILL RISE AGAIN I WILL DO IT 

anyways endgame time are we excited?? 

you guys know now a LOTTT but also so little... makes the next few chapters so fun with what i'm going to do over the five year span because let's face it we need some character development between here and endgame here we GOOOO 

hope you enjoyed see you in the next one 

(: