They managed to make it to the couch of the common room before the elevator doors pinged opened and a dark haired girl with an beat up looking golden retriever came bursting out.

"Where is Clint? That sick son of a-" Kate started to say then stopped when she saw the Avengers shift uncomfortably at her words.

"Kate, I'm sorry-" Steve began.

"No...no..no,"She said softly "He's dead isn't he?"

No one answered.

"Isn't he!" She basically crumpled to the floor next to her dog. "Somebody say this is some horrible,sick joke." Tear began to streak her face like racing stripes.

Natasha gave Steve a look of get-your-but-over-there-and-comfort-her-because-I'm-not-going-to. But she was about two seconds too late.

Tony had left his armchair and sat down on the floor pulling the now full on sobbing girl into his arms lightly. The others watched in shock,Tony wouldn't even sit on a couch with someone and now he was hugging an almost complete stranger. But the didn't stop him because he seemed to be doing a better job than they could do.

"He can't be dead!" Kate cried into Tony's shoulder.

"I know." He soothed.

"He promised me! The day he left he promised that he would come back one way or another..." Her words were becoming muddled sentences that made literally no sense to anyone anymore. Words like ;Russian mobsters, track suits, red cars, coffee, pizza dog and most of all why.

Natasha cringed at the word why. Why? She thought. Why did you die Clint? People cared about you, This girl did. I did, I still do.

Then all of a sudden Kate let go of Tony and stopped crying.

"How did he die?" She asked, her brown eyes huge with grief.

Tony looked down. Bruce shifted uncomfortably on his feet, looking just a tad green around the edges. Natasha stared right through Kate, her lips pressed together in a thin line. Steve just stared sadly at the young girl.

"I think that it maybe better that we let the details stay buried." Steve said softly.

"Tell me." Kate's voice was dangerously low. "Tell me or I swear to God I will end you all. Clint was one of the only people I trusted, don't try to mess with me."

"Um Katie, maybe this would be easier over some tea or-" Bruce tried to intervene but was cut off unceremoniously by Kate.

"The only person who can call me Katie is Barton." She stood up and stalked over to Captain with a sharp look in her eyes. "Now tell me or I get violent." She warned.

Kate looked like a mouse compared to Steve but he still felt a little scared. This kid was Hawkeye's apprentice she's probably just as dangerous as he was.

" He committed suicide." Natasha said with a voice cold a liquid nitrogen, staring cooly at Kate from her spot against the wall.

Kate's threatening look dropped away like a sheet of water.

"He would never do that, not Clint." She said firmly, but her hands were visibly shaking like leaves in the wind.

"I know." Natasha said softly. "I always thought he was going to be here forever." Natasha thought.

"How did he go?" Kate stared at Natasha with a look of absolute hopelessness.

Natasha could almost see the images in Kate's mind:

Clint lying on the bathroom floor with large slices in his wrists.

Clint face down in the tub with a hair dryer stuck in the water next to him.

His body hanging from the rafters swaying in the breeze.

Him sprawled out on the bedroom floor, his cold hand clutching an empty bottle of pills.

They made Natasha want to puke and she instantly knew why Kate was so fixated on knowing exactly what happened. Nothing could be worse than what you had already imagined.

"We were all celebrating some successful mission or something, I don't even remember what. All of us were too shit-faced to even notice he wasn't partying with us or that he wasn't in the room. Sometime between us not noticing Clint's absence and when we passed out from over drinking. He took a gun from the range, climbed up onto the roof and shot himself." Natasha explained quietly.

"No, Clint is too strong for that,he would've survived the gunshot." Kate argued.

"Maybe he would of if a med team found him in the first six minutes, but once he shot himself he fell off the side. This tower is over a hundred stories high. No one, not even Hawkeye can survive that fall. Especially with a bullet wound." Tony supplied absently.

"What about a body? Can I at least see his body?" Kate was grasping at straws.

" Clint was a SHIELD agent. SHIELD has tracker that monitors the pulse. If there is no pulse for more than thirty seconds it self destructs, turning the body and any tech with it to ash." Tony answered again robotically.

Kate nodded.

"I think I should go home now." She started to stand.

"I'll walk you out." Natasha walked over to Kate and helped her up.

Once the reached the elevator Natasha grabbed Kate's shoulder.

"I need you to have something."

"What do you mean?"

Natasha reached into her pocket and pulled out the dog tags Steve had found.

"These were Clint's." She touched the hole going through the tags almost lovingly. " That's from a mission in Budapest. It's a bullet hole from a bullet that was meant for me. Clint dove in front of me. He saved my life and almost ended his." Then she put them over Kate's neck. "The doctors said if the bullet had been going a fraction of a second faster it would have been completely fatal. These tags saved him. Maybe they'll save you someday."

Kate nodded, a single tear running down her face again. Then she gave Natasha a half hearted smile and stepped into the elevator.

Leaving Natasha thinking of the moment in Budapest when Clint jumped in front of her.

If only I could've jumped in front of the bullet you shot.