InsaneJournal

Go high enough and the sounds of the world diminished. Turn off your hearing aid, and they were entirely washed away. The second part had been a newer discovery. It wasn’t all bad: he’s always relied on his sight above all else, and the slack in the line when it came to hearing was an obstacle, but it wasn’t so bad. Not really. There was a privacy to being able to tune out the rest of the world for a moment. Seclusion to think in. A moment to breathe.

Besides, the scores of singing townsfolk were about as low level threat as it got. Broadway might not be to everyone's taste, but it definitely didn’t deal any fatal blows for existing. Probably, anyway.

No, if anyone snuck up on Clint as he perched atop Armitage Hall, then they were seeking him out. And if they were seeking him out, that would fall to friend more than foe. Still, old habits died hard and he’d stationed himself to catch the movement of the rooftop door in his peripheral. There was time to spend up here, looking on the campus below and making sure everyone was moving around on their ways without incident. It was a stakeout without any stakes. Busy work.

What else did a former Avenger do without a fight? Without his family.

He waited. For whatever came next.

---

Natasha was a notoriously light sleeper. Had been since childhood. Missions and murders and mayhem always had a way of finding her, so she always kept herself aware. When the dream was over, and the memories didn't fade, Natasha found herself staring at the ceiling. The memories were the same until one small point: they had failed to keep Ultron from getting the body that would eventually go to Vision.

There were years of memories since then. Memories of trying to stay alive, to find a way to defeat Ultron, and hopefully find some people who were still leftover. Things didn't always turn out the way she hoped though, and the one thing that kept her sane had given up and used that to get her to safety. With Ultron out of their dimension, she'd stuck Zola back in his USB drive and tried to find out where Ultron had actually gone.

It wasn't long after the Watcher showed up, and their quest to save the multiverse began. When all was said and done, there was nothing for her to go home to. All of her family, her whole world, was gone.

Things were complicated enough in her head without yet another set of memories fogging things up, but there was one thing she absolutely knew: she had to find Clint.

She threw her legs over the side of the bed, and her feet thumped against something cold and smooth. When she looked down, she realized it was a shield. It was Alexei's shield, and she was certain it was the one she had in these other memories. Not the one Alexei brought with him when he was here. This one was from a dusty box in the Kremlin. After she got dressed, she strapped it to her back.

It wasn't hard. Their friendship was tried and tested and bonded to last as long as either of them lived. She knew exactly where he would be, so her eyes scanned buildings but it didn't take long for her to find him. Armitage wasn't far from the dorms, but she still sprinted across the cracked sidewalks until she threw open doors and ran to the roof access.

The door slammed open, and Natasha stopped and just looked at him for a good minute without moving or blinking.

---

The door made sound. He was sure it did. To his ears, it was quiet. The swing, momentum built-up behind it -- it had to clatter. Maybe it thumped. Clint’s attention whipped over at the suddenness of the motion, and he found Natasha standing in the doorway.

She wasn’t moving. Her lips were still, no indication of words that he could make out. His instincts were that of a SHIELD agent, but also that of someone concerned for his best friend. Natasha didn’t do this sort of thing without cause. She wasn’t one for the theatrics; she was calculated and thorough. Whatever it was, she had determined that being here in person was the right choice.

He shoved himself off the edge of the rooftop, away from his vigil, and reached up a hand to flip his hearing aid back on. Noise came back: his footfalls on the surface of the rooftop and a bit of wind whistling past.

“What happened? Where are we needed?”

---

She found herself shaking her head softly from side to side, her brow furrowing slightly. Of course he'd think that something was wrong with the way she'd barged up here. It was disarming, seeing him like this. Everything was so similar, and yet…. He had his left arm, not a cybernetic one. His hair cut was different. His clothes.

"Memories," she mumbled, shuffling across the rooftop to meet Clint. She didn't take her eyes off him, just in case — in case he disappeared or did something stupid. When she was within his personal bubble, she reached up, both hands on the sides of his face, and looked into his eyes. Really looked into them. She remembered how haunted his eyes had been after —

After Ultron nuked the entire planet. After Laura and the kids… after everyone was gone, except them.

"You're alive." She tried not to laugh at the absurdity of that statement, but she repeated it. "You're alive."

---

Memories. He’d been told about that. How dreams came on at night, but they were actually just some weird way Derleth adjusted someone’s recollection. That whatever the person woke up recalling, it was some actual thing that had happened. Clint had scoffed at the time, sure that people didn’t update like a Stark phone, but he hadn’t dealt with it before.

Natasha didn’t play those games, either. She wouldn’t be faking this.

His expression moved from concern -- braced for action and ready to go -- to a quieter version of it. He let the tension fall out of his muscles, and then some more as Natasha’s hands came up to his face.

“Of course I am,” he told her, trying to fathom what would make her think otherwise. His tone was quieter, unsure. “Right here, same as you. See?” He lifted his hands and placed them over hers. They were a bit cold from the brisk morning air and exposure, but some warmth remained in his palms where they grazed against her knuckles. “Right here.”

---

"The multiverse —" How the hell did you explain that you gained memories from another version of yourself in another universe just like yours, and not this Derleth nightmare? Natasha exhaled a breath when she felt his hands over hers. She let herself relax, shoulders slackening."The multiverse is real. There's so many of our worlds out there, Clint."

It was hard to put into words without sitting down for storytime. Without spewing everything out like a Russian Wikipedia, talking about time and space and Watchers. And Clint, losing his family again. She was that Natasha, but she wasn't that Natasha. It was going to take some getting used to, and if the reset took it away again, then it would be for nothing.

Maybe she should have sat on this longer.

But she knew there was no way she could keep this from Clint. Everyone else, sure. Not Clint.

"I got memories of another Natasha. Ultron won. Everyone died except you and me. And then you — and I was alone."

---

He was braced for something that was probably outside his usual jurisdiction, and Natasha’s words cinched it. Multiverse. Other worlds. Not just worlds where they woke up vampires, it seemed, but worlds similar to the one they both came from. Ultron had been a name long buried…

“How did another Natasha get in your head?” It was the obvious question to Clint, but he knew the answer was anyone’s best guess. Weird stuff happened, especially to an Avenger. Weirder stuff happened to one stuck in a pocket dimension.

He paused. Turning the thought over in his head brought forward another question. “No mind control at work here, right? Not that I know what the point of shoving that in your mind would be…” Clint focused on Natasha’s face, eyes locked. He was filling the space between replies, but she probably knew why. Being asked to contemplate another place and time where his kids were gone wasn’t something asked lightly. She wouldn’t do that unless this was truth.

---

"I don't know."

She couldn't remember a mid-week second set of memories. She'd heard that Darcy got an update from their timeline. A few others from other worlds had too. Nothing like this though. At least, nothing that anyone was talking about. She was going to have to talk to Eliot or Strange to look at this with magic. She might have talked to Rick for the science side but without him, she didn't know who to talk to about it.

"Your middle name is Francis. How come I never knew that?" Mind control wouldn't have told her that, but Arnim Zola with his computer memory could. He had access to all the SHIELD files until he'd been blown up. "Your mee-maw?"

---

Not the answer he wanted, but it was the expected answer. Him and Natasha were field operatives and very skilled at punching things. That didn’t rate knowing how any of Derleth’s usual half-baked chaos worked or why it happened. Clint used his hands over Natasha’s to sneak his fingers in between hers and his cheeks. It was a smooth movement to clasp her hands instead and lower them down. He didn’t let go yet.

“Okay, for one, you can’t run up here and freak me out and then drop on me that you found out my middle name is Francis. Two: probably because that was clearance level seven and up.” This was their language. Serious ran concurrently with quips and sarcasm. It was probably the reason they’d weathered so many dire missions together -- because after a hard moment, one of them would say something out of left field and earn a snort of laughter. “I didn’t make those rules. You never asked. But since we’re here… yeah, my mee-maw.”

But, still, as random as that question was, it was a tell. That was real information. Dreams didn’t deposit that kind of thing. Dreams were losing your teeth because you were stressed out all week and your mind caved to it. Dreams were bits of the day, woven into the nonsense of unconscious thought. They weren’t places you emerged knowing someone’s full name.

He gave her hands a squeeze. It was the unvoiced question: are you okay?

---

Natasha had been calm and collected as the others had left to go back to their worlds. Captain Carter had been the last, eager to return to another time when Steve was alive and she could be with him. Ultimately, she'd gone back to deal with HYDRA's infiltration of SHIELD. This Natasha — she had nothing but a husk of a world to go back to, knowing she was the last person in that entire dimension alive. Ultron had wiped everyone out. She had argued with the Watcher that she wasn't going to walk out that door. He'd sent her somewhere else.

Another world that lost its Widow.

She hadn't been around long enough to get too much of the lay of the land, but Loki had arrived earlier to take over Earth. She'd seen Carol flying around, Steve fighting, Fury.. The memories ended shortly after she arrived, after she'd gotten the upper hand on Loki and used the mind stone on him.

The middle name wasn't necessarily important, though she would use it for the future, to hang over his head.

As for whether or not she was okay? Another unknown. So much had happened in such a short time. She was used to going with the flow, but when there was no flow, things had a way of settling. Not always where they should.

"I know what it's like," she told him quietly. "To lose you." Irony was kind of a bitch. He'd done the same thing she'd done but into a bunker full of Ultron sentries. "I had to make sure you weren't — giving up."

---

He was getting fragments. He knew that asking her to unfold everything would be a big ask, especially if it was a whole new set of memories layered over ones that had always been there. This sounded like the sort of problem Stark would know what to do with. Vision. Maybe Bruce, if they could get him pinned down. It also sounded like something that would require needling someone’s mind, and that was something Natasha alone would have to decide. She’d already been through that and earned her freedom from it.

Her words were somewhat indirect, but Clint knew what she meant. This wasn’t the loss of a friend getting so controlled by his grief that he broke contact with everyone who had survived to go on a tear of violence. That wasn’t giving up. Giving up was…

More final. The way she said it, he knew what she meant.

“I’m not giving up, Nat. Not me.” He gave a glance around the roof, which was barren of comforts. It didn’t matter. They’d spent many hours up on roofs, waiting. Physical comfort might not exist up here, but the solace of memories filled in for it.

“C’mon.” He nodded towards the corner perch he had moments ago. “Take a seat. Run me through it, if it helps to process it. Whatever you need. You know you don’t gotta ask me for that.”

---

Natasha made her way to the spot he pointed to, reaching over her shoulder and pulling off the shield. The inside still had the little identification sticker. Alexa I must have still been in prison when it happened. Melina, out on her little pig farm. Or currently being cycled through the Red Room once again. Yelena…

The distant look on her face was not far off from the one she sported under Wanda’s mind control. This future was so much worse than anything in her past, and while Natasha was hopeful of her new dimension, that world still didn’t have a Hawkeye, and that was a tragedy for Natasha.

“In this dimension, we weren’t able to stop him from uploading himself into the Cradle. Into Vision’s body. Vision never existed there. You and me, we were off in a quinjet. I don’t even remember what we were doing up there. I just remember them — the nukes.” She snapped out of her daze long enough to look at him sideways. “It was all of them everywhere. He’d gotten a hold of them and launched. It was just us in the world for years. Trying to find a way to stop him.”

Clint had lost his arm along the way. They’d set him up with a cybernetic. They’d found so many secrets on their own in that time. Natasha could see that Clint was slowly shutting down, but she never expected him to give up. Two very different ways his life went when he lost his family.

“Then he got the Infinity Stones.”

---

Clint took note of the shield, but it was a question for later. Even still, he raised his brows for a second and contemplated how much he felt like his wings had been clipped to not have his bow. Flightless bird Clint Barton. He shoved that to the back of his mind and took a seat beside Natasha. The loose grit of the rooftop came up on his palm, but he dusted it off.

“An Ultron with Vision’s body and the Stones?” A heavy subject, but Clint asked the question in his usual way. Casual, a little exasperated. He gave Natasha a glance and ran a hand back through his hair. Luckily, it had been time since an ill-chosen faux hawk, so his fingers laced back through something more in line with a middle-aged man who wasn’t currently having a crisis of identity.

“That something we should be worried about right now, right here?”

---

To be fair, anyone from any time period could show up with destruction on their minds. If Loki had come from an earlier point, this would not have gone the way it had. If Rick Sanchez had been more preoccupied with death rays and murder, and not his booze… If Julia, shadeless and murdering people to test theories. If Wanda was from before Ultron. If Stevie wasn't a good person. And those were just the people here.

"No, not right here and now." She knew enough about Derleth to know that it was unlikely that Ultron in that particular form likely would not show up, and if he did, it would be for a week of wanton destruction, and then everything would reset. Not not worrisome</i>. "As far as I know, not an active threat. I'm going to need to see a few of the wizards. I don't know of a case like this — of someone getting memories from another version of their own timeline. A few people have gotten what I call updates. As if they went back home and lived some more. They just never left here. This — this is something different. And not like the usual Derleth mess."

---

“I kinda hate that you can say something like ‘I need to see a few wizards’ and that’s a real thing. Life was way easier when magic wasn’t a thing I had to know anything about. I still don’t know anything about it, and that’s too much.” But he gave her a side smile and leaned over, just enough to bump shoulders against hers as they sat there.

“But alright, you say there’s no threat right now, so I’m following your lead.” He was quiet then, for a few moments. “Wizard now? Wizard later? And when you say wizard, I assume you aren’t meaning just anyone magic-leaning.” Like Loki was unspoken, but Natasha knew his thinking. Strange was the better bet. Always.

“Sit in quiet? Or maybe you tell me about that shield…?”

---

"Wizard later." Natasha wasn't looking forward to it. While she trusted Waugh, Wicker, Strange, and Wanda with magical things, rooting around in her head was not one of them. She didn't want anyone in there ever again. It was bad enough she had no control over who she was in this place from time to time, but to have someone actively go into her head. As fond of Wanda as she had grown, she still wasn't interested in the woman digging around in her head. And the others, well, they were even worse in her mind.

Strange was the better bet, though. He also had medical training.

Natasha turned her shoulders to show off the shield. It wasn't vibranium, but it was whatever the next strongest metal was. It would work for her. The Russian star, maybe not so much. "It was Alexei's before he went to prison. Guess it came along with the memories. I found it in the Kremlin when we were looking for something."

The nice thing about him not having those memories? She could use the same jokes. "What do you think? Is it my color?"

---

“Wizard later,” Clint echoed with a nod. He wouldn’t chase it. Honestly, Natasha was more than capable of seeking out exactly who would be best suited, and he’d go with her if she asked. When she wanted. When she was ready.

He gave the shield a rap with his knuckles. The noise of the metal wasn’t as pristine and clear as a vibranium shield, but it was still solid. “Oh, Alexei. No, that explains it.” The star was almost a complete lift from Steve’s, save for the coloring. He’d heard plenty about the great rivalry of the Red Guardian and Captain America -- plenty of it from Natasha’s retelling. In all those little moments she trusted him with pieces of herself. Of her family.

“Color? Sure. Looks better on you, too.”

---

She trusted Clint to have her back, particularly if there was mind bullshit involved. He knew what she'd been through, what she wouldn't want. He'd probably be a little more soft-handed then she would when it came to that kind of thing. Loki's mind control had really done a number on him when it came to that. She didn't wish that on him, but she was grateful to have gotten him back.

"I'll still be wearing my usual black, but with the shield and my super powers, I'll be unstoppable." She huffed a laugh as she leaned into his shoulder in return. "You ready to be my sidekick?"

It was her subtle way of steering the conversation away from the darker side of this conversation. The memory of standing in the snow outside the bunker where Clint made his last stand… It was the only time she ever wanted to give up. The only reason she didn't was because Ultron was still out there, and he needed to be stopped. Once that was done, she — stop.

---

He wobbled just a small amount as Natasha bumped his shoulder, but the response was his nearest arm stretching out and coming to rest just behind her. There wasn’t much contact save for where his forearm brushed against her back. Close, but not pressured. There, but only if she wanted.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve been since I got here. Sure ain’t me callin’ the shots.” He looked down at the campus, up from where they were seated with a bird’s eye view. “Not complaining. Never would,” he replied. Because in the end, no matter what, having her back… that was worth anything.