The Keeper of Infinity

Nightmares

July 23, 2025; 2.10 am; Iowa

The kitchen was quiet, as was characteristic for two in the midnight, except for the gurgling sound of the coffee percolator that Clint focussed on rather than how his breathing had reduced to short pants.

Several minutes ago, he had woken up from his not–peaceful sleep with a silent jolt, his eyes had flown open with a start at the same time his hands had formed tight fists, ready to strike at the first sign of an attack.

Only the attack never came.

It had taken him a minute to comprehend his surroundings, for his brain to catch up that he wasn't in a battlefield; that he wasn't running to keep the aliens from getting their slimy hands on the...gauntlet; that Thanos was two years ago.

That his family was safe and back.

It was only when his wife had stirred beside him, her otherwise beautiful features twisted into a tired scowl that only came from the irritation of being disturbed in sleep, that he had realised the room had become filled with his deep, loud and desperate breaths.

He had quietly tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs, careful not to let them creak under his weight so as to not disturb his children's sleep too. The first thing he had done upon entering the kitchen was to throw open the windows, the cool gusts of air slowly absorbing the beads of sweat that had formed on his neck and forehead.

His breathing was yet to be back to a normal, healthy pattern, and he was pretty sure Laura would be disappointed if she saw his not–so–healthy way of dealing with his latest nightmare–induced panic attack.

His therapist — unwanted and mandated, might he add — would probably take it a notch higher and call him suicidal or something along those lines for dealing with anxiety using coffee which was absolutely ridiculous considering coffee didn't even help with panic.

Clint could often come across as stupid but he wasn't that dumb.

The problem was nobody really understood his predicament, just like an average person could never even imagine the extent of issues a soldier back from a war or a tour would be carrying with him like a consistent burden weighing him down, crushing him under its enormous weight.

His therapist might have been a soldier herself, once upon a time, but she didn't fight Thanos. She didn't fight an oversized grape–coloured being with a nutsack for a chin who held enough power to turn them into dust literally.

She didn't have to fight a battle they had lost once already. And Clint prayed she never had to either.

Five years. He had spent five years with his family gone — just like that in a snap of a finger — only to get them back and lose the ones who had been his family in everything but blood.

Neither his therapist nor his wife understood that coffee wasn't his way of lessening his anxiety. It was his way of dealing with the losses he had suffered; the losses they had suffered.

It's okay.

Those words haunted him to this day. Her smiling, resigned face as she accepted her destiny, the brave and assuring smile she gave him — which he did not fucking deserve.

She had red in her ledger that she wanted to wipe out but what about the red she had spilled onto Clint's ledger in the process? How was he supposed to live with that? Why was he expected to live with that?

Natasha had been his family as much as his wife and children were. Perhaps even closer of a family than they would ever be.

It sounded nasty but it was the truth. He loved his wife with all his being and god knows, his children could play football with his heart, but Natasha held his life in her hands.