Clint x Natasha FanFic's

Patch You Up by TashaBlackWidow

Patch You Up

TashaBlackWidow

Summary:

A darkness comes in the night, and it takes whatever it desires as a sacrifice.

The first time Clint is almost too late to keep his partner alive.

Work Text:

The jungle around them was thick and eerie, no one would deny that. Even Clint was wary of the landscape which grew randomly and dangerously around them. Even in the broad daylight there was an aura of death around the leaves and the branches of the jungle. From the small clearing where they had set up camp, he couldn't have seen further than a few inches into the rainforest, and that unsettled him. His sight was his prize possession, along with his bow, but his aim and his skill were useless without knowing what he could see. It unnerved him. The sound of the place unnerved him, too. During the first hours of their journey the forest had been alive with rushes of noise, but not the air felt too still, too silent for anyone to relax fully. A rainforest should be alive with sound at any time of day, but the birdsong had gone, the scurrying had stopped. It was odd, to say the least.

Fury had them tracking an Unknown into the thickest part of the jungle. They weren't sure if it was a mutant or a creature from god knows where, but it was causing up a stir in the local villages and they seemed fairly certain that this was some kind of curse upon them. So in comes S.H.I.E.L.D. and their dispatch scouts. Only the best that were available, of course, in this case, Clint himself, Natasha Romanoff, and Steve Rogers. Tony Stark was waiting back at the main camp with the flight transport. They'd crossed so many borders that he could barely remember which part of Southern America they were now in. It was so dense that they had gone as far as they could go before setting up camp for the night; even they could only go so far. So they decided to wait it out and keep watch; if this person/thing was going to show themselves, it would be at night, so they found a patch where they could keep themselves armed and alert and took turns keeping watch. The locals warned them that no one moved in the jungle once the sun went down. No one except the darkness.

He didn't blame them for their suspicions of a great evil lurking in these trees, because partly he felt them himself. He and Natasha had strayed a little into the jungle from their campsite just to get a view on their immediate surroundings, but after no more than thirty meters it was agreed that this was a trip not to be done in darkness. That was when they felt the sensation of being watched. They arrived back at camp moments later, but no more reassured and an hour later the two of them had succumed to the three-day trip so far while Steve took the first watch. Clint had tossed and turned for a few hours, the feeling of being watched never leaving, but Steve was competent and would wake them if need be, so he forced himself to sleep.

But they awoke to a scream. Steve and Clint both shot into seating positions from where they had been laid out on the ground at opposite ends of the cleaning. Hands instantly shot to their weapons when they realised that they were alone. Natasha was gone.

"Natasha," Clint mumbled, looking around them. It only took a further second to panic when he gazed upon her boots, carelessly tossed aside beside her jacket. She'd been carrying it the whole trip or shoving it into the gaps in her backpack because of the humid heat, the last he'd seen she'd been using it as a pillow. Her gun was visible beneath it, and when he kicked the jacket aside and picked up the weapon he saw her backup gun and her knife lying beside it. He's been working with Natasha long enough to recognise the sign of trouble.

And the noise again. The scream. Louder. Clearer. And the bile rose in his throat.

"Is that her?" Steve asked.

Clint nodded.

They immediately took off the in the direction of the scream. Natasha's scream. He'd never heard her scream before, but he knew it was hers. He was even managing to keep up and sometimes overtake the soldier where he was putting all his strength and energy into the sprint, ingoring the branches that scratched and grazed the skin on his forearms. Because of the scream, that gutteral, awful scream that he could never have imagined coming from Natasha. He tried to tell himself that she was using her voice to alert them, that she'd realised the danger, needed back up, and had screamed as loud as she could to ensure that they would hear her. After all, she had been taken during her watch and she knew they were both sleeping. But not a single part of him believed it. It sounded to pained, afraid, even. It had awoken a part of him previously unknown, an ache and an indescribable pull towards wherever she was.