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It's an awful pain, full-bodied, soul-searing. He hadn't seen Frank in any of the immediate aftermath, because Frank was supposed to be dead, and it was only after a lot of shit happened that he found out the opposite, right up until Frank showed up on his doorstep and got a punch and a hug in that order. The family went to the funeral. Lisa and Lila were the same age. They would've been the same age. Frankie could've been a big brother. They're all gone. How are all of them gone? Five kids and two amazing women?

So when Frank says he knows, he knows Frank knows. He hates every single moment of this, as he grips Nat's hand so tight he thinks it's probably gonna bruise, and she takes it without a hint of complaint because she can, as he buries his face against Frank's shoulder to hide the shame and the pain and the empty fucking pit inside him.

Nate's not even three. His birthday's next month. A beautiful summer baby. Frank would've been invited, and this time absolutely not allowed to play Baby Shark, banned, and he would've done it anyway just to be annoying. What takes a baby away like that? Lila had an arrow in hand. Cooper, Cooper's the first born and will always be his baby boy. Laura's an amazing rock. Who's going to upkeep the tractor? Tony promised/threatened to turn that thing hi-tech and she had suggested over her dead body, just needs a tune up now and then like any vehicle. Is it just going to rust in the barn? Is everything going to rust? Every nail in that house he put there himself, every board of every addition when he hands can't keep still and his mind could always see the bigger picture, are they going to age and mold and warp? All the food will rot. The lights, the gas, the water, that'll all get shut off. How many homes have suddenly become abandoned in the blink of an eye? He turned his head. That's all it took.

All it took was a snap of the fingers for everyone to lose. Karen's gone. Is Tony gone? Is the Spider-kiddo? Sam? Bucky? Wanda? Vision? Is Yelena still out there, somewhere? He'd never met her, only heard the stories, and now maybe he'll never get the chance.

It's all gone. They're all gone, and sure, sure, yeah, there's a desperate little part of him that hopes with some regrouping and focus, they can find a way to undo all this. But he knows. He has to know. That they also might all just be gone for good.

His own heart is so loud in his ears that it's hard to hear the quiet that starts to come down like a blanket when he bleeds it out everywhere hard enough that he becomes empty, everything inside gouged out. His breathing still comes ragged, little gasps and starts. But the horrible wailing dies down, throat raw with the pain of it all, and the tears just stop coming.

Kind of wants to puke up Frank's meal just to completely empty himself out. But the absurd thought about how rude that would be floats up to the top of his mind. He just wants to sleep. Or rather, just wants to be unconscious and pretend none of this happened for a few days. Just a couple days. Let the world try to keep turning without him for a while.

Automatic instinct, thoughtless reactivity, one of his hands snakes up to the back of Clint's neck, the back of his head, palming there and holding as the guy comes completely unspun against his shoulder. Fingers bury into hair, while his free hand grips a solid fistful of sleeve fabric on the other side. It's a display that makes it immediately clear to anyone with the capacity and the mindset to pay attention just why exactly Frank is here in the first place. What their dynamic is, what level it is.

It's only proven further when he pulls back just enough to bump his forehead against Clint's, eyes squeezed shut, recycling air, breaths low and voice lower.

"I know- I know," another pair of murmurs, echoed, painful — to the tune of an apology that he won't actually give, because it's a platitude and no amount of I'm Sorry will make a single fucking difference here and now. "Listen- listen to me: breathe. Just breathe. Just keep breathing. That's gonna be the hardest part, but you gotta keep breathing. That's it. That's all you gotta do right now, alright?"

From now until whenever. From now until they find a way to fix it — not that Frank's optimistic, but he's willing to concede that it's worth the effort — or now until forever, he just needs to keep breathing. Anybody asking anything more from him right now can get absolutely fucked.

It isn't that Nat's presence alone wouldn't have helped. They've been through damn near as much shit together as Clint has with Frank. But her ideas of family and the loss thereof--she could've been there for him, talked him through or let him sob it out and tell him to breathe, yeah, but it's not the same as someone that's been there. Specifically, there, in that spot of losing everything, losing an entire heart, several reasons to exist.

Frank's been through it, and damn it, he's still standing despite it all. And he's here.

How the hell he's managed that, it's a mystery. Because Clint's exhausted. All he has to do is breathe, and, "I don't--" Know if he can, know if he wants to. The words are all kinds of hoarse, creaking out. "I don't think--"

"Don't think." Natasha rubs circles along his back. "Breathe."

That's easy for her to say, isn't it? But. No. He doesn't even have it in him to want to snap anything. Because it isn't easy. None of this is, for anyone. A deep sigh shudders out of him, his whole self seeming to deflate. He nods absently against Frank. He can't exactly empty his mind and only think of breathing, but he can at least start evening out his breathing. Try to match Frank. Relax against them both.

"That's it- attaboy, that's right, just like that," lilting and thickly accented as he only gets when he's compromised or a little drunk. Maybe he's both right now — drunk on grief, drunk on shared heartbreak and the overwhelming desire to help. To fix things. To take away a pain he cannot possibly take away.

Three, four, five breaths. Six, seven, eight. Steady on, steady on, until Clint finds a rhythm he can keep and hold. Only then does Frank begin to peel away a few inches — hand still on the back of his neck, the fingers of the other furled in his sleeve, but enough distance that he can glance over Clint's bowed head to meet Natasha's eye.

She nods. He nods back at her. They both pretend like neither of them have red-rimmed, shining-wet eyes. Like they aren't both falling apart on their own and for Clint. He gets her, he thinks, better than some of her team members do. Not Clint, obviously, maybe not Steve, but better than Thor. Better than Rhodey. He gets her. They've had talks.

He knows where her head's at, and he concedes a little space to her, to the artful dance of her palm running along his back, to the gentle bow of her head as she leans in to murmur a few things now, too. She needs this. She needs to be able to comfort him, it's important, and he's more than willing to let her, because God knows this man's gonna need every speck of fucking support he can handle for the next-

For a long time.

It's quiet, after that. Quiet for a long time, from everyone. No words but Natasha's soft murmurings, no sound but the engines of the jet, until at last they're making their descent for landing.

They need it. They need it, because Natasha has softness, has bruises and scars on that softness. She's lost a family, too. Aunt Nat and Uncle Frank were always welcome in that house. The kids loved them. Clint and Nat lean on each other, and Clint mostly keeps his eyes shut, because he's bone tired and doesn't really want to see any looks in anyone's eyes. He doesn't want to see pity, or he doesn't want to see the pain reflected back at him. Might have to do some bonding with Thor later, sounds like, but he's not sure he could take a conversation about it right now.

Maybe a big, bone-crushing hug might be nice. Later.

When Steve lands them, and it's late as hell, and it's quiet because even here, half the everything living's gone, they file out. Bruce doesn't leave Thor's side, a comforting hand on a huge bicep, blanket held around him in the other hand. Rhodey lets the distraction take him, his mind clearly elsewhere, doesn't have anything snarky to say. Nat asks Clint if he's good to go, and he nods. Insists on taking one of his bags, and he doesn't even argue. Steve is still solid, rigid, but he can catch a moment where Steve's staring at him and Frank just a few seconds too long before the captain tears himself away again.

The compound's big, as usual spared no expense by Stark, who should be here even in spite of the last big blowout that happened. People always in and out. Was never full. Still feels too big, too empty. Clint's never spent a lot of time here, mostly helping train the new recruits (who aren't here), but mostly god damn retired until he wasn't again.

"Maybe it's about time I get that sitrep," Clint suggests, his voice still thick from all the Too Much.

"You're an idiot," is what Nat says with not an ounce of heat to it.

"Everyone get some rest." Steve's trying to sound commanding, but really just sounds as tired as the rest of them. "Whatever you can. We can all reconvene in the morning and catch everyone up on what's going on. Then we figure out where to go from there." Everyone includes Frank, because now it has to include Frank. "Castle, there's plenty of empty rooms; we'll make sure to give you access to one."

This place, he thinks, is either an empty casket or a full tomb. It's hollow and enormous, it feels like all the people who are missing from it are standing just over their shoulders, staring down accusingly. It feels like turning around to face them makes them disappear, leaving a howling vacancy in their wake.

He feels the spirits of people who've never even set foot in the place, too.

The last thing he wants to do is go sit in his own sterile room by himself, blocked off by walls and locks, wondering if there's been some kind of delayed reaction and the two people in this building he actually gives a shit about maybe turned into dust overnight while he's pretending to sleep.

All the same, he nods once at Steve — more to telegraph appreciation than with any real intent to claim one just yet.

He's not much of a drinker, doesn't tend to turn to alcohol to solve his problems, doesn't like the loss of control over his faculties and his paranoia, resents the fogginess, but... if there was ever a time for it...

"There anything to drink around here? I could use a beer."

It's levelled at Natasha, and there's a subtler question underneath — if he doesn't wanna come, do you got him? She nods. Murmurs, "C'mon, kitchen's on the way. Should still be something stocked."

This is the story of how Frank Castle stole free booze from the Avengers.

Clint isn't in the mood to not want to come. He thinks he should be. He thinks, distantly, that what he should want is to be alone in the room designated for him. Sit in the shower with it too scalding hot until it gets cold and then lay in bed and hate life and feel miserable.

But he follows along to the kitchen anyway. "Could all probably use something," is his useless and unnecessary commentary. He knows where the drinks are. The hard stuff's high up and out of sight, for Tony's recovering alcoholic sake. Or. That's the reason it was initially. And then everything kinda happened and now he doesn't know if it's still there?

He has to climb up onto the counter like a gremlin or a child to reach the cabinets over the fridge, and he sits on it solidly when he retrieves a bottle of scotch. Some of it's been drunk, but not a whole lot.

Natasha takes it easily out of his hands, while he lets out a little "aww" about it. Won't fight it, because he gets that if he starts, well, shit, he'll probably keep going, and nobody needs what happens after that on their hands.

Thor then reaches over and takes it out of her hand, pops the top like it's a soda, and downs half the bottle in one go. "Thank you," he says, with seemingly no self-awareness to be had right now, "for retrieving your Midgardian might to share." He hands it back, mumbling something about proper Asgardian ales, and Bruce just pats his arm and tries to point out that he knows Midgardian ale isn't on par and maybe he should go take a shower?

Nat wrinkles her nose, not for any kind of stink, just for trying not to laugh, and trying not to judge, and having to take a moment to figure out what the hell to do after that. She sighs, has Clint take down a couple glasses while he's up there. Pours out a portion, then tells him to put the bottle back.

It's kind of nice to at least follow the most basic orders. He won't be greedy. Just take what he's given.

She holds up her glass like she's going to toast, but doesn't say anything. He gets it. They can all clink their glasses or aluminum cans or whatever. They can drink. They can commiserate.

These people are a trip. He doesn't know if he's amused or annoyed by them. Always had kind of a vendetta — mild, tiny, annoying little thing about how they aren't doing enough to look out for his brother. Guy's running around in his shirtsleeves with gods and hulks and whatever the hell else, they can't do him a little better than they have been?

But at the same time, the camaraderie reminds him of what it used to be like back overseas with his guys. With Clint. When all of them would get back from some mission that nearly wiped them the fuck out, and hot on the heels of a near-death experience and the loss of a handful of your buddies, all there is... is this strange limbo middle-ground nowhere feeling. This absurd, abstract, impossible to describe sense that reality is at once a fucking joke and not even remotely worth laughing over, which sometimes only serves to make it funnier.

He doesn't really feel like laughing now, but he understands the wrinkle in Natasha's nose. Understands the humor, distantly, at the rapport between Bruce and Thor. It feels comfortable.

He toasts his glass against theirs, and then brings it to his lips to slam the whole thing at once. The burn earns an exhale — been a long while since he bothered drinking. Usually sticks to one beer at a time, but damn if it doesn't feel like the right time to get a little drunk just to cope with it all.

Laura and the kids. Laura and the kids. Maria and the kids. Maria and his kids.

He wants to burn this building to the ground and fight every single person inside it until the flames take him. He wants to hollow himself out and feel nothing at all. He wants to keep his shit together for Clint, but Clint's safe and in good company now, with Natasha taking up about half of his good excuses to remain sober and functional.

Shame she put the bottle back.

To keep himself from going after it, pulling it back down again, he grabs a beer instead and heads over to the table. Drags out a seat and settle wearily into it.

It's a classic case of it all catching up to him once he stops moving. Never should've stopped moving. Too late now.

He never thought he'd have to feel this again.

Frank looks like he's being crushed by the weight of gravity when he practically melts in that chair.

Natasha and Clint have a silent conversation.

Partly it's some perfected bullshit spycraft thing, the ability to talk without talking, with subtle glances and barely there movements. But it's also just the familiarity one gets with someone who feels like another part of their soul. And it is a conversation, whole and complete and impossible for Frank to make out the details of. The way Nat tips her head, the way Clint taps a finger on his glass. Hands ghosting calmly--Clint casts a haunted glance at Frank for just a moment, just a moment, then resumes whatever the not-talk is.

It's a few moments longer before Nat touches his face gently, cupping his cheek warmly, then pulls away, gives space. She passes by Frank and gives his shoulder a brief squeeze. And then she's gone.

Clint stares down into his glass. Fighting the temptation to go dig out the bottle again now that it's just them. He polishes off the last dregs and sets his glass down beside him on the counter next to the others.

"She thinks a shower's the second best idea she's had all day." The fact that he can say something like that without actually exchanging words with her might indicate he's 'paraphrasing' as it were, but who knows, actually. "You know how bad those outfits can start chaffing if you don't peel yourself out of 'em on the reg? And they've been in 'em for a whole epoch-defining fight and hours and hours and hours of flight. 'm not exactly envious."

Maybe he's talking stupid shit to fill the space. But it's his little version of explaining--they're alone right now because Frank is trusted to watch out for Clint, and Nat would like maybe five or ten minutes to cry alone in the shower as she gets all the leftover blood and sweat and dirt off her.

Paraphrasing.

"Y'know, I've never seen Cap with a beard before?" Clint keeps going. On a roll. Fill the space. His voice is hoarse and tired and only lubricated with a drink so far. "Weird. But he's making it look good. It's working for him. And Thor got his hair cut. Less Fabio, harlequin novel guy. I dig it. And I think he's got a new eye? Is that weird? I promise both his eyes used to be blue. Kinda wanna ask, but that might be rude."

The slow shake of his head at what follows she thinks is automatic, rote — he's complained about this before, in that bitching-but-not-really-complaining unserious way he rants sometimes, about how freaky it is they can ESP like that at each other. Have those whole conversations without either one of them saying a damn word, and sure, maybe him and Clint can do that a little themselves, but it's never tap three times if you're gonna go take a shower because it's the best experience you've ever had levels of specific. Fucking spies, man.

Normally, all that would be coming out of his mouth, but the words don't feel real tonight. The rant doesn't feel genuine. He feels like he's one frayed thread away from spinning out, and the only thing keeping him under control is that Nat just transitioned responsibility back over to him again. Pulling himself together's a little bit like throwing a lasso around a hurricane and trying to break it in without a saddle, but he grits his teeth and manages something. Something. That's not nothing.

"So what, you people get new eyes the way the rest of us get haircuts now?" Comes his hoarse, somewhat terse return. Voice a little too thick, pitch a little too low. Lumping Clint in with the rest of his team only when it conveniently suits whatever Frank's bitching about, as usual.

His fingers curl around that beer. He wants to hurl it against the wall. He takes a slow, masochistically controlled drink of it instead, and denies himself the pinprick of catharsis he'd feel from it. Once that door cracks open, it'll take a hell of a lot to shut it again.

They're all just trying to hold on as best they can. In all the small ways. Nat needs a moment, and Frank needs to clutch tight to his control, and Clint needs to fill the space with noise before it's too fucking quiet in too big a place. He can see Frank just fine from here. Sees how every move is deliberate and calculated.

He can see how if Frank lets go, it won't be pretty, and a chunk of the building might end up demolished before a Hulk or a Thor holds him to the ground and keeps him there.

"Man, I don't know, it's usually just fancy contacts with recording abilities, or mesh masks with shapeshifting disguises." Which is still stuff Frank doesn't have access to unless he breaks into some very secure places.

His fingers pick at little things, unable to find comfort in stillness. Bit of dirt here. Loose thread there. Some scuffed skin to peel. "If you need to go another round, I probably got it in me." An offer. For the violence thrumming under Frank's skin.

He can see the offer coming before it hits — it's in the way Clint is picking. Dirt, skin, any excuse to be twitchy with his fingers, to pluck at something when he doesn't have a bowstring instead. And it's not that he doesn't want to that has his head shaking back and forth. It's that he wants to too much.

"Wouldn't go down the same," he says instantly, a little too steely, a little too cold. "It would be different."

Because he wouldn't be able to hold back. There wouldn't be that same presence of mind that got them out of Clint's house without breaking any of his furniture. Once he lets go, he's gonna get carried away and it's gonna get brutal, and he's not gonna stop.

Rather, he'd stop for Clint, but it might be about two minutes after he should've. Only thing that'll do is rile him up more out of shame or remorse, and make him want to swing at something else even harder.

"Maybe we could ask Steve."

But it's better if they all manage to keep a lid on Frank. At least for now. Keep him cool, keep him collected. Maybe in a day or two...?

It feels like this day will never end. If he sleeps, he'll wake up and maybe he'll be at home, and maybe it'll happen all over again. Is that a paranoid thought? Or is that exhaustion starting to bleed in?

"Gym's all kinds of reinforced." For obvious reasons. And for future reference.

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