In Their Hands ✧･ BARNES ✔

twenty three

   Zola was clearly exhausted. It had been said before, but at this point, it had gotten even worse. Her body just wasn't moving the way she wanted anymore. It was funny to say because she was only eight years old. Her body felt so light and unwilling to move as she wished. She wanted to move into a relaxed home with her family, she wanted to stop worrying about the bad men and crazy people who were always trying to hurt them. 

   There was a few more months of running. Those months grew to be a little harder with a three month old baby to take care of. It felt like she was growing up so fast. She brought the small family happiness during such a dark, terrifying time. However, she was also a handful. 

   They constantly had to risk their cover to go out and stock up on diapers. When Clint would buy about six boxes in bulk, the cashier would always give him a sideways look. He hated that. It was so annoying. What was so weird about buying his child diapers? Maybe they had been giving him a sideways look because of something else.

   The baby was always crying. If she wanted she could simply draw the bad guys to them. She was a baby, though. Clint loved her and how adorable she was, but he just wanted her to stop with the crying. It wasn't like he could hear the baby when she cried, but he could definitely see how much strife it caused Natasha. He could also clearly see how much it slowed them down during the day. He was never rude to her, but in his head, he was screaming bloody murder. Just as loud as Ilona, actually. Even if he didn't know how loud Ilona was.

   When the phone began to vibrate on the table, Clint jumped to his feet to turn it off. He didn't want to wake up the baby and he didn't want their phone to be tapped. He had been rocking Ilona to sleep in his arms. He offered to do it so that Natasha could go take a rest. She had been working with Ilona all day and night and he wanted to give her some help. 

   He didn't know how he should try and pick up the phone with the baby sitting with him. He wanted to lean over the back of the couch and grab it, however, he couldn't do that with the baby in his arms. He wanted to make this fast and get it over with, but trying to lean wasn't doing that for him.  He rolled his eyes and instead stood to his feet in order to walk to his ringing phone. 

   Clint looked at the name of the caller and he hesitated to lift it up when it read that there was no caller ID. He knew exactly who was calling, just as everyone else did. However, he wasn't sure about whether he wanted to answer or not. He wasn't ready to fight anyone. He knew that running was exhausting, but fighting would take more out of them. Fighting would mean one of them could be hurt. Fighting would mean having to force Zola and Natasha to face their demons. He didn't want to force them, but running was no longer an option. He would have picked up the phone, but it wasn't like he would have been able to hear anyway.

   He didn't know what they were going to do with Ilona, he didn't know where they were taking her, but he was sure that the info would be classified. They weren't going to tell him because he could possibly give away the last safe position that they did have.

   He looked down on the baby that he held in his arms with a stare of hesitance and sorrow. He wasn't ready for them to take her away. Going into this, he could lose Zola and Natasha too. He wasn't ready for such heartache, but he also wasn't going to let it happen. He wouldn't let them take Natasha or Zola away. He knew that Coulson had to take Ilona somewhere safe, though. That was different.

    ...

   In hindsight, maybe it would have been better to get Zola somewhere safe too. Maybe it would have been best to train her in combat for the past few months. That would have been a great idea, but Clint was too happy living his normal life with the small girl to even think about it. He didn't want her to have to fight if she didn't need nor want to.