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Red. The color of the big top as the Amazing Hawkeye performed.
Red. The color of the children’s burns after the hospital fire.
Red. The color of her hair as he peered through the scope in Bucharest.
Red. The color of the strawberries he buys when he knows Natasha’s staying for breakfast.
Red. The color of his blood-stained hands.
*
A second explosion rocks the quinjet before Clint registers that he’s been hit. They’re under heavy fire, one engine already blown, Coulson hollering, “Take off already! Goddammit, Barton, what are you waiting for? Before Romanoff bleeds out!”
It’s the reminder that Natasha’s hurt, combined with the fact that Coulson only swears when shit’s really hit the fan, that has Clint lurching forward to grab the controls. Only there’s a gaping hole in his side. Blood gushes from beneath his shredded tac vest, and he has to clamp a hand over it to stanch the flow.
Correction: he’s not just hit, he’s hit bad.
“Coulson?” he calls shakily as blood oozes out from between his fingers. Is that ... a piece of metal protruding from his gut? That is ... definitely not supposed to be there. “Coulson?”
No answer. Probably because Coulson’s too busy yelling, “Romanoff! Natasha! Nat, stay with me. Do you hear me? That’s an order.” She coughs. Coughing’s not quite the opposite of dying, but in Clint’s current state, close enough. “Barton, if you’re going to get us out of here, now’d be the time!”
Clint is going to get that plane in the air if it’s the last thing he does. Holding in what might be his intestines, he powers up the quinjet. Apply toe brakes ... check the flaps ... pull back on the yoke ... and lift off. The quinjet rises into the air. Clint’s vision is already starting to blur. He glances at the fuel gauge. Enough to get back to D.C. Which, fuck. That won’t do. That won’t do at all. The quinjet can autoland itself, but if they don’t jettison some fuel first, there’s a real risk of it catching fire.
“How’s - how’s Natasha?” Clint calls, his tongue thick in his mouth. He hastily flips switches and turns knobs, pulling how to do this from some far corner of his brain. Bullets continue to pelt the exterior of the quinjet. Something on the ground explodes.
That gets Coulson’s attention. “Barton,” he hisses, “did you - are you dumping fuel on a firefight?”
You’ll thank me later, Clint thinks grimly. Not that he necessarily expects to be around for it. He’s bleeding out much faster than Natasha had been with they called for extraction in the first place. He got her out, he did his part. Clint finally allows himself to look at his wound.
Yep, those are his intestines. “Coulson?” he calls again. He’d really like to walk Coulson through landing the quinjet before succumbing to his injuries. And an update on Natasha’s condition. He tries again. “Coulson? Tasha, is she - ”
“Cool your jets, Barton,” comes the response. He doesn’t sound quite so frantic now that they’re in the air. Good. That means he was able to stabilize Natasha. As long as he managed to get the bleeding under control, she’ll make a full recovery. People don’t die from compound fractures, not even the open kind that penetrate the skin.
Shrapnel wounds, on the other hand ...
He comes to when Coulson swears, “Jesus Christ, Barton, what the hell happened?”
It’s pretty fucking obvious if you ask Clint, but he’s going into shock and therefore willing to indulge Coulson. “Got hit,” he mumbles, unable to put up much of a fight when his SO, his mentor, his friend pries his hands off the wound. “Already set a flight plan. You’ll have to - have to put her down, Phil.” Tell him how to initialize the landing.
“I can do that,” says Coulson, his sleeves already rolled up. He’s not wearing a tie. Oh yeah. Now Clint remembers Coulson tying it around Natasha’s thigh. “Can you stay with me until we land? Is that something you can do for me, Agent Barton?”
I guess this is goodbye. “Nat?” Clint croaks. He feels Coulson apply firm, but gentle, pressure to his side.
“She’s going to be fine,” Coulson assures him. “So are you, Clint.”
Clint knows better than to believe Coulson. He closes his eyes, and the world is red.
*
White. The color of driven snow on the taiga.
White. The color of the clawfoot tub in which she’d drowned the Brazilian diplomat.
White. The color of rumpled hotel sheets covering Clint to the waist.
White. The color of her bone protruding from pale flesh.
White. The color of the walls in the room where she wakes up.
*
Natasha knows as soon as she opens her eyes she’s not in the S.H.I.E.L.D. med bay. All agents who’ve spent any time convalescing know those walls are mint green. So far she’s been lucky to avoid an extended stay, but she can’t say the same for Clint. Where is her partner? After all, she plans to blame the hit she took on him.
“Where - ”
“Germany,” Coulson supplies, which answers a question, just not the one she’s asking. “How’re you feeling, Agent Romanoff?”
God, she’s thirsty. “Water?” she croaks, trying to sit up. That’s when Natasha realizes her entire leg is in traction. She groans, letting her head fall back against the pillow. Soon as she’s mobile, she’s going to kill Clint. Though, judging by the toe-to-thigh plaster cast, it’s going to be a while, maybe even longer than it had taken to bounce back after Odessa.
Coulson takes pity on her and holds a paper cup up to her lips. She drinks greedily. “More?” he asks.
Natasha shakes her head. “Where’s Barton?” she asks. Surprisingly, a quick scan of the room shows no signs of Clint having been there. She doesn’t see his bow, or his boots, and the pad of hospital stationary hasn’t been folded into paper footballs for flicking into the trash. She frowns. “Coulson, where’s Clint?”
“He’s in a room down the hall.”
OK, Natasha thinks. But there’s something about Coulson’s tone she doesn’t like. Something he isn’t telling her. “Is he all right?”
Coulson has a seat at her bedside. “He took a hit as we were leaving Tunisia.”
“So?” Like that would stop Clint from drawing crude doodles on her cast. Unless ... “What aren’t you telling me, Coulson?” The last thing she remembers is a bomb blast rocking the quinjet. But they’d taken off, hadn’t they? How bad could it be?
Turns out, pretty bad. “The shrapnel embedded here,” says Coulson, touching his abdomen just below his right rib, “and caused extensive intraperitoneal injuries. While the surgeon was able to remove it - ” he breaks off, shaking his head. “It’s bad, Nat,” he says roughly. “I don’t even know how he managed to get us off the ground.”
Natasha knows. Natasha knows because it’s not the first time he’s put his life on the line for her. When she finally finds her words, it’s to say, “Why aren’t you with him? Why didn’t you insist we be put in the same room?” Black Widows don’t cry, but here she is, fighting back tears. Blame it on the morphine. Still, she manages to glare defiantly at Coulson. “When can I see him?”
“In a few days, if the swelling’s gone down, the surgeon will try to close him up. Until then, he’s in the ICU. No visitors. The infection risk’s too high.”
Clint’s dying, Natasha realizes. Clint’s dying, and Coulson’s trying to soften the blow. Her chest heaves - she’s sobbing, that’s what’s happening - as a white-hot rage engulfs her. “No,” she says, “no, I have to see him, I have to - ”
An alarm sounds. “Natasha!” Coulson says, and if he’s having trouble restraining her the nurse in the crisp white uniform definitely won’t be able to. “It’s going to be OK, Nat. It’s Clint. He’s - ”
It takes two nurses and a doctor to administer a sedative. Natasha’s eyes droop, and the world is white.
*
Purple. The color of the bruises his father used to give him.
Yellow. The color of the bullseye at the center of the target.
Orange. The color of the city lights of Kuala Lumpur on their first mission as Strike Team Delta.
Green (and grey and brown). The color of Natasha’s eyes.
Pink. The color of the shiny new scar on Clint’s abdomen.
*
“You’re an idiot,” is the first thing Coulson says to Clint when he comes to. “What on earth were you thinking?”
His pacing is going to make Clint sick, so he closes his eyes. “Oh good, you managed to land the plane.” Fuck, he sounds tired. He slowly, tentatively opens one eye. “How long was I out?”
Coulson crosses his arms, and Clint hedges his bets. Four days? Coulson shakes his head. Clint holds up another finger. Five days? He swipes his index finger along his palm. A week?
“Almost two,” says Coulson. “And before you ask, Agent Romanoff isn’t here anymore. Once you were out of the woods, Director Fury called her back to D.C. She left yesterday morning.”
Honestly, he’s touched. That’s longer than he expected her to stick around. Clint tries to grope under his hospital gown, inspect the damage.
Coulson pulls his hand back. “Two new surgical scars and a bunch of lacerations. Recovery time, eight to ten weeks.”
They both know he’ll be back in the field in six, but giving Coulson a thumbs up is all the energy Clint has at the moment. “Sorry you had to stuff my guts back in,” he grunts. He’s forgotten most of it, but that part he remembers in technicolor.
“Try not to make it a habit,” says Coulson, lowering himself into the chair at the foot of the bed. He picks up a newspaper. Maybe this time, he’ll skip the lecture.
Not a chance.
“What you did was reckless,” Coulson says after several minutes. “You could have told me you were hit. I would have come up with another way to get us out. You almost died, Clint.”
Clint idly flips down the corner of the sheet, creases it with his thumb. “I didn’t,” he points out. He can see the doctor’s note on his chart. Prognosis: good.
“But you could have, and it concerns me that you don’t seem overly concerned.”
“You told me to get us off the ground, I got us off the ground,” Clint says pedantically. “I told you how to land it, you landed it. You’re saying you could have come up with a better plan? All while stabilizing Agent Romanoff? It’s right there in the S.H.I.E.L.D. handbook. ‘When multiple agents are down - ’”
“Don’t quote regulations at me,” Coulson snaps. He pauses. “I helped update most of them.”
Touché. “So what’s the problem?”
“The problem,” Coulson says through gritted teeth, “is S.H.I.E.L.D. has anti-fraternization rules, Barton, and it’s pretty obvious you’re breaking them when you refuse to wait for extraction and carry Tasha onto the quinjet yourself.”
Fuck, he had called her Tasha in front of Coulson, hadn’t he? Still, it’s his instinct to deny, deny, deny. “Oh, c’mon, Coulson, she’s my partner.”
“And I was willing to overlook you hooking up with her occasionally - ”
“What was I supposed to do?” Clint interrupts angrily. “Let her bleed out?”
“I didn’t say that,” says Coulson. “I didn’t say that.” He rubs his mouth. Finally, he says, “You’re off Strike Team Delta, Clint. I’m going to recommend you for long-term reassignment to Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.”
The overhead fluorescent lights make Clint see stars when he closes his eyes, brightly colored spots in the darkness. “OK,” he says, defeated. “OK.”
Because Coulson’s right. He can’t work with Natasha. Not when he’s in love with her.
*
Black. The color of the ink on the discharge papers when he checks out against medical advice.
Black. The color of the sutures Clint removes himself.
Black. The color of the widow spider.
Black. The color of Natasha’s dress the night before he leaves for New Mexico.
Blue. The color of the tesseract’s otherworldly glow.