˚ ₊ ★ ❝ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄 ❞  ˖⋆࿐໋ ⋆ ☔︎

˗ˏˋ 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲: 𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 ┊͙ 𝖼𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗍 𝖻𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗈𝗇 ˎˊ˗

***

━━━ NATASHA ROMANOFF. HIS BEST friend. The two peas in a pod that have been together through thick and thin and to hell and back.

Except now he went to an alien planet and came back... without her.

When he arrived back, he felt the remorse in his heart sinking heavier than the stone that he held in his hand.

It should have been him instead.

The heavy weight in his chest weighed heavier than Natasha did as she dangled from his hand off the edge of the cliff.

"Let me go," she said softly, accepting fate.

"No," Clint refused, struggling to hold onto her. "Please no."

Nat nodded lightly. "It's okay," she whispered.

"Please," Clint desperately pleaded.

But his prayers weren't to be answered as Natasha's foot pushed off of the cliff, breaking away from Clint's hand.

And Clint sat there hanging from the rope from which he was dangling from as he watched his best friend fall to her death.

It should have been him instead.

And the fact that Thor just could not accept her death, angered him even more.

But his anger was rapidly replaced with grief as he mourned over the lost of Natasha.

"It was supposed to be me. She sacrificed her life for that goddamn stone. She bet her life on it."

He thought back to when they first met—in Budapest, where he was sent to kill her. But he saw good in the broken girl that thought the only purpose in her life was to kill whomever she was assigned.

Together, he brought her back to SHIELD and gave her a purpose. She had a family. Even more so when Nick Fury banded the Avengers together. They became the family she never had.

She watched him get married to the love of his life. She watched him have his first kid, along with his other two. She watched him leave the team, wanting to retire from the stress and pain he felt from fighting all the time to live a normal life with his wife and kids.

She had been there for him all the while, and he just wished he could have been there to pull her back from jumping off in time to give his life for the soul stone instead.

     It was her sacrifice, and she did it for the better of the world. But she was gone, and all Clint felt was the grief about how it just should have been him.

( Author's Note )

I will not tolerate the 'It should have been Clint' memo. NO THANKS! I love Clint with all my heart, and he is not appreciated enough in this fandom.