It had been a few weeks since Valentina had given Yelena her new target and today was the day she left to complete her new mission. Since she and the other widows -with help from Natasha- had freed the widows; Yelena had been a sort of hitwoman for Valentina, wiping out only the most dangerous and untouchable criminals.
"Are you sure you have to go on your own?" Alexei asked with concern.
"Yes, this is an assignment I have to complete on my own." Yelena answered as she was shoving her guns and some other gear into a black duffel bag that was placed on her bed.
"What even is this assignment? You've told us nothing about where you are going or what you are going to do." Melina's voice was laced with concern for her daughter as she leaned against the wall of Yelena's room.
"This is just something that I have to do on my own. Please understand." She gave her parents a pleading look.
Though they didn't want her to be on her own after what happened to Natasha, they knew that by the way she talked about this assignment that this was something she had to do for herself. Perhaps it was her way of keeping herself busy so the pain of Natasha's death would lessen.
Yelena gave her parents a small smile. A fake one. Melina took her hand and looked into her green eyes. "Alright, we understand. But please, just be careful... please." She begged.
"I promise."
Yelena turned toward Alexei and he gave her nod of understanding. She gave Melina's hand one last squeeze before heading to the front door and walking out to her car.
Once she got into the car she pulled up her phone and read the words on the screen.
Target Location: Missouri
---At the Barton residence---
It was a little past 6 o'clock in the morning, Clint was sitting on one of the sofas that he had in his living room, staring out of the window into the gloomy acres of green. A restful night of sleep these days were rare for him -the nightmares and the guilt of what he had done during the five years had finally caught up to him. His nightmares were filled with the faces of those whose blood was on his hands. One in particular came up the most: Natasha Romanoff. The feeling of his best friend's hand slipping through his fingers and the pained look in her eyes as she fell to her death haunted him.
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After Tony snapped his fingers and got rid of Thanos' entire army the first thing Clint wanted to do was get on the next jet he could and see his family after a long five years without them. So after everything had settled down he got onto the first available quinjet and flew to his farmhouse where he was met with hugs and kisses from his entire family.
"I've missed you guys so much." He said with a quiet voice in between sobs.
"We're here now." Laura assured him as they all walked back into the house.
The first few hours of their return was filled with Clint and Laura reorganizing their house and the kids playing with each other in Cooper's room. Sure, Clint had tried his best to keep his house in shape during the five years they were gone, but it had been so painful for him to be in his home without his family that he eventually just hired a housekeeper to take care of it for him. Although they did a good job at keeping the house clean they completely reorganized the area and put a lot of the family's stuff into boxes to make it easier to keep the house clean. So there they were, trying to put the house back to the way it was pre-blip.
"What is it?" Laura put her hand on Clint's back and rubbed it lightly while he looked out the kitchen window the other way.
"Nothing." He smiled as he turned to her and put both his hands on her waist. "I just can't believe this is real. You guys are actually here."
"And we're not leaving you anytime soon. Not again... but that's not what's bothering you." She gave him a caring look. "Tell me. C'mon don't make me call Nat and tell her to come over here and beat it out of you." She joked.
Meanwhile, Lila was growing tired of watching her older brother play his video game and came up with a plan to mess with her parents. "Hey Cooper, wanna mess with mom and dad?"
He took off his headset and looked at his sister. "Sure why not, what do you have in mind?"
"I'm gonna tackle dad, you get mom."
"Lila, we're gonna get in trouble if we do that."
"No we won't, dad's way too happy to see us to ground us yet. C'mon, Aunt Nat would support this." She looked at her brother with mischievous eyes and a goofy grin.
"Fine. What do you say Nate, wanna help us?" Cooper gave his little brother a small smile, knowing his parents would be less mad if Nathaniel was in on it too.
"Yeah!" He yelled jumping up.
"Laura, there's something I need to tell you." Clint gave his wife a sad look. Tears were starting to form in his eyes.
"What is it, honey?" She was starting to get worried. Her heart had begun to thump uncontrollably and she felt as if a swarm of butterflies were in her stomach.
"It's just um... I don't think Nat's gonna be coming over here anytime soon." The tears were already threatening to fall and his eyes were burning.
"But I thought you said everyone who was in the wrong with the Accords were forgiven since they saved the world."
"Yeah... those who survived were pardoned."
Tears started streaming out of her eyes. "Clint..."
"She saved my life, Laura... she's-" He looked down at his hands, "She's gone."
"But how- Nat- she can't-"
She struggled to put the words together, the shock had been too much and she couldn't process it. She felt sick. Her best friend had died saving her husband's life and now she'd never see her again. Clint slowly pulled his wife into a hug; Laura let out small hiccups with her cries. They stayed in that position for a few moments until a soft voice interrupted them.
"What?"
The couple turned around to see Lila with a shocked expression and tears streaming down her face; Nathaniel and Cooper standing next to her. Cooper looked at his parents with a blank expression.
"Lila..." Clint motioned to pull his daughter into a hug.
"She can't be gone, Dad. She can't." She backed away from him when his arms came to wrap around her. She eventually gave into his embrace and buried her face into his chest as he felt the warm tears soak through his shirt. Laura stayed back crying and looking at her three children with her hand covering the bottom half of her face, unable to think of how to comfort them.
"Aunt Nat's gone?" Clint looked up to see Nathaniel giving him a questioning look.
Laura stepped over to her son and bent down so that she was on his level and put her hands on his shoulders. "Yeah honey... she's gone."
"But she'll still visit us right? She always does." He looked to his mom hopefully.
"I don't think she'll be able to visit us anymore, Nate."
"But Aunt Nat loves visiting us. She told me so!" He protested, gently flailing his hands through the air.
"She did..." Laura gave her son a sad smile before pulling him in for a long hug.
Cooper stayed perfectly still as a statue as his parents were consoling his younger siblings, not shedding so much as a tear. He never said anything, he wanted to be strong. After a while of standing there he ran up to his room and locked the door behind him. When Clint finally managed to convince his son to let him in, they just sat there on the bed, looking forward at the wall ahead and not saying anything. Cooper was completely numb. He knew that he was sad about her death, but for some reason he didn't feel like crying, or yelling or even punching something. He just wanted to sit in his room and pretend that the rest of the world didn't exist.
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"You're up early."
Clint was pulled out his thoughts at the sound of his wife's voice. She walked up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Couldn't sleep." Clint put his hand on top of hers and gave it a light squeeze then gave her a small smile before looking down.
"I miss her too." Laura gave him a solemn look.
"Yeah... I just wish it didn't have to be her. She worked so hard to be a better person and now- now she's just... gone."
A single tear fell down Laura's face which she quickly wiped away before clearing her throat. She rubbed Clint's back and took his hand to pull him up from the chair.
"Come on, she would literally kill us if she found out that we were still moping around about her." She laughed as she pulled him sluggishly to the kitchen.
Laura always tried to lift the mood up whenever they were sad about Natasha; talking about fond memories they shared with her and ensuring her husband that she was at peace now. Although Laura was still in tremendous pain about her friend's death, she tried her best to make sure that her husband was moving on from her death. She hated to see him in pain and she knew that Natasha would've wanted them to keep on living.
"Us? Yeah right! You mean that she would kill me and you would watch from a safe distance with a smile on your face." He teased sarcastically.
"Well that insurance claim does sound pretty appealing." She laughed as Clint charged towards her, tickling her and making her laugh even harder. "Alright, Alright, come on we gotta make breakfast for the kids, they have to be at school by 7:50."
They both put a pause to their antics to make a breakfast of pancakes for their kids. They finished right before all three of them lazily came down to the kitchen, rubbing their sleepy eyes. They all had a hard time accepting and moving on from Natasha's death, but after letting the news sink in for a few weeks, things were finally starting to get better. Though they all knew that there would be an empty place in their family that belonged to Natasha, they understood that they had to keep living life. These past few days especially had seen a change in the Barton Family: Cooper was finally talking more, Lila was talking about Natasha after not mentioning her name for weeks and Nathaniel understood that Aunt Nat loved him very much, despite never being able to see him again.
The kids finished breakfast and Laura was loaded them in their pickup truck to drive each of them to school.
"Hey could you go pick up some more eggs while I'm gone?" She shouted to her husband as she was walking out the front door.
"Aye-aye boss!" He smiled at her as he gave her an over-dramatic salute.
He got into his SUV a few minutes after he had finished doing the dishes from his family's breakfast and drove to the nearest town to their farmhouse. He arrived in the city after nearly an hour's drive and went into a supermarket that his family always got their groceries from, though his car was parked in a separate parking lot, a block or two away since he didn't want to pay for the supermarket parking lot.
He grabbed the eggs like his wife had asked and a few other things that they also needed, like milk and some other groceries. He paid for the stuff and greeted the cashier like he usually did before starting his somewhat lengthy walk to his parked SUV. Deciding that he didn't want to walk the full distance, he took a shortcut through an alleyway sandwiched between two tall office buildings.
Little did he know that for the past few weeks he had been stalked by a certain blonde, ex-assassin. Normally, being the trained agent that he was, he would've noticed something off right way, but Yelena was skillful. She learned his routine –his pattern. She knew what he would do and carefully studied him, waiting for the right moment to make her move. She heard his wife ask him to go get groceries for them and knew immediately where he would go to get them. So she went to the alley way which he frequently cut through, and she waited.
She was perched up on the fire escape, just 30 feet above the ground and waited till she saw him. She took her hand gun and screwed the suppressor to the end of the barrel. Lifted the gun in front of her face. Lined up the iron sights. Took a deep breath in and then let it out.
And pulled the trigger.
---Meanwhile---
It was a warm day in Ohio and the wind blew a gentle cool breeze through the air. Melina got out of her truck and walked onto the green grass, a pained look in her eyes as she makes her way to a beautiful tree with a gravestone underneath it. She walks to it and kneels in front of it.
"Natasha, it's me. "It's mama." She brushes her fingers across the cold stone as she feels the grooves of the letters carved into the rock.
An image flashes through her head as she keeps her fingers attached to the cool stone and looks at the ground.
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They had just taken down the Red Room once and for all, and they had done it as a family. Natasha had called Agent Ross and his men to come to the Red Room crash site and was about to separate herself from the rest of her family to buy them some time. The family exchanged their goodbyes as Melina grabbed Natasha's hand.
"You take care of yourself." She told Natasha, with a mother's warmth.
"Don't worry, I got this." Natasha smiled at her mother as she squeezed Melina's hand.
"I know."
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Her eyes were getting watery from the memory.
"You told me you would take care of yourself. So why did you go and take care of everyone else instead?" She looked back up at the stone with two lines of tears streaming down her face.
She quickly wiped her tears away and stood up, still looking at the stone. Although she hadn't been ready to visit Natasha's grave the past few weeks, seeing it now let out a sort of relief. She felt more at ease than she had before arriving.
<"I'm sorry it took me so long to come visit you. I just couldn't bring myself to say goodbye.">
She sniffled and took a step back to look at the scenery surrounding the gravestone. It was a beautiful place and she was glad that Natasha had such a peaceful resting place –even if she wasn't actually buried there.
"I'm sorry that your father hasn't visited you yet. You know how he is... so headstrong. He refuses to accept that you're gone forever. Just give him time. He'll be here... and he'll say goodbye to you properly. Forgive him. He is hurting more than even he realizes."
She bends down and plants a kiss on her index and middle fingers and touches them to the stone.
<"I miss her."> Melina turns her head and sees Alexei walking up to her.
She gives him a sad smile as he walks to her and stands to her side. She puts her hand on his lower back as he puts his hand over her shoulder, pulling her into his side and puts a kiss on her temple. They stand there for a while, not saying anything. Just silently paying their respects to their fallen daughter.
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I wonder if Clint's okay :)
Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this! Tried my best with the different grieving processes of all the different characters.
Just a heads up that more characters are coming into play really soon, so vote and comment what you think is going to happen.
Thanks for reading! Means a lot!