Holly and the Archer

THIRTEEN

"Hey, it's hot, do you fancy ice cream?" Hope stuck her tongue out and shook her head.

"Ice cream yucky!" Holly sighed, heading towards the ice cream shop anyway. Clint was due to meet them nearby anytime soon, and she couldn't stop fidgeting. The last few months, Hope had been particularly agitated in the absence of her father and his return made her feel like the weight on her chest was finally being relieved.

The two of them sat at a table outside the shop. Hope played with a napkin while Holly licked her ice cream, the two of them content and quiet aside from Hope mumbling to herself. With half of her ice cream left, Holly raised her eyes to see Clint walking down the path towards them. His pack of arrows and his bow rested against his back and his eyes downcast. 

"Daddy!" Hope jumped to her feet when Holly stood from her seat, smiling. They moved to the sidewalk where Holly was too busy waiting for Clint to reach them to notice that her daughter had labelled the wrong person and was running off in a different direction. Clint's face dropped when he noticed who his daughter had seen, and he reached for his bow, Holly turned to see what had troubled her husband so much.

Her face fell.

Sure enough, Hope had linked the bow and arrow to her father, but this man was far from him. Barney looked more like a tourist than a hellbent archer, but the gleam in his eye told them everything they needed to know. He raised his own bow, the docked arrow aimed at Hope.

Yelling, Holly sprinted for Hope and turned her back to Barney. She held Hope's shoulders in an attempt to keep her daughter from moving, confident that Clint was already apprehending his brother. The breath was knocked out of her as a pain struck her in the back. She gasped, having felt like someone had punched her in the stomach and dropped her head heavily. Her ears started ringing as Hope looked up at her with worried eyes and somewhere around her she could hear talking- or was it yelling? She couldn't tell.

"Mommy!" Hope's voice shocked her back into reality. She sounded like she was underwater and her head felt heavy, but the fear in her daughter's eyes drove her gaze to the arrow protruding from her abdomen.

The pain hit her like a ton of bricks. The ice cream cone that had been balancing between the tips of here fingers dropped to the ground, and she let go of her daughter. She touched the tender area around the arrowhead where blood was beginning to blossom, still feeling absent from the world around her. Hope was beginning to back away, tears started to fall freely, and she looked around for someone, anyone to help.

Behind her, Clint fired an arrow as a woman with red hair ran towards them. In front of her, Barney dropped his bow as Clint's arrow struck him in the centre of his chest and suddenly there were people everywhere. Civilians were screaming, pointing and running. Agents of SHIELD were closing in on Barney where he was stumbling around, some of them calling medics to the scene. The red-haired woman caught Holly before she hit the ground. Someone grabbed Hope and she started screaming. Her screaming and crying did not cease even when Clint assured her she was safe and held her close to his chest to prevent her from seeing anymore.

He was desperate not to show his daughter the mess her mother had become, he didn't want her to see him cry and understand how helpless he felt. His chest ached, and he took deep, shuddering breaths which matched Holly's broken wheezes. The red-haired woman stroked Holly's hair from her face and smiled softly.

"Hi, your name's Holly right? Mine's Natasha." She continued to stroke her thumb over Holly's forehead as she struggled to do anything except look around. The pain had paralysed her, the fear of leaving her daughter and Clint absolutely terrified her. "Clint saved me, I used to be an assassin, but he's helping me be better. He talks about you a lot." Holly looked up to see the woman straining to keep her smile. "On one of our first missions he made me swear that, if anything happened to him, I would come back and find you. He wanted me to make sure you weren't alone, and then, I assume this was when he trusted me more, he also asked me to look out for Hope." Clint's hold on his daughter tightened as he watched Natasha finally meeting Holly. Over the last few years the assassin-turned-agent had become a good friend of his, hell, she even helped him plan his proposal. "I'm telling you this because the offer still stands. Holly, I will take care of your family for you. They're not alone."

Holly began crying, she choked out a thanks as EMTs started swarming the scene. Clint and Hope followed as Holly was carried away from the scene, he also thanked Natasha on passing before she promptly vacated the scene.