➸ buying a stairway to heaven by zihna

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Mcu!Avengers 
Genres: hurt/comfort, alternate universe | Smut: no, brief mentions 
Word count: 34592 | Status: complete

My comment: One of the best Clintasha AUs I’ve ever read. This fic uses the plot of The Avengers but in an alternate universe where the six of them are fallen angels, messengers and servants of God. There are also some BrucexTony and past StevexTony in it but it’s a must-read especially if you like mythology as much as I do.

God has many eyes. Some are small, some are vast, some peer into the darkness, others stare into the sun, but no pair of eyes is sharper than Uriel’s.
(Though that is not what he will call himself, one day. Uriel is a strange name, even among humans.)
Uriel’s eyes see everything, given enough time.
He finds Gabriel in 1881. It was only a matter of time, really, and good ol’ Gabe hasn’t made himself all that hard to find. (Granted, it’s been nearly three thousand years. He’s grown arrogant, not that he wasn’t in the first place.)
“Raz,” Uriel whispers. “I’ve got him.”
“We moving in?”
On the wind, there’s the faintest rustle of wings.
Uriel pauses. “No,” he says, folding his own wings (wide, golden-brown) in tight. “Not today. We know where he is. Now we just wait.”
“For what?” Raziel turns towards him, heaven’s light stirring beneath her eyes.
Uriel is God’s sharpest pair of eyes, and he is the archangel of wisdom. “For when it’s time.”
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➸ Bows and Catapults by Sproid

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, OC 
Genres: hurt/comfort, alternate universe | Smut: no 
Word count: 8345 | Status: complete

My comment: What if Clintasha first met when they were children?

The Laurensons put Clint in a room with a tree outside the window. In his opinion, that’s a really stupid thing to do, because if they ground him there’s no way they could make him stay in the house when the tree is right there. He hasn’t said anything though, because he’s not as stupid as they are even though he’s only nine, and also because he really likes watching the branches make cool shadows on the ceiling at night. Sometimes when he can’t sleep, he puts his hearing aids back in and goes to sit on the window ledge so he can listen to the wind make the leaves whisper to him. It always calms him down.
He’s doing that tonight. Not because he can’t sleep though, but because he doesn’t want to. At dinner, Ben and Monima told him that they’re going to pick up another foster kid tomorrow, and he knows what that means. Oh, they said it’s because they’ve always had two kids at once, and he needs someone his own age to play with, but that’s not how it works. The new kid won’t like Clint, and Ben and Monima will prefer her so they’ll get rid of Clint, and he won’t see this room again. He’s already got most of his things in the backpack hidden under his bed, so that when they tell him they don’t want him any more, he can run away before they can pass him on to someone else.
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➸ Adagio, allegro by Anuna

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: alternate universe, romance | Smut: none 
Word count: 1230 | Status: complete

My comment: Cellists!Clintasha au! It’s a very beautiful piece of work. You’ll love it even more if you know how to play instruments or at least read music, like me.

Natasha blinks and pries her eyes open to the sounds of rain beating against the window. Allegro her mind supplies, too insistent for early hour. She closes her eyes. The bed is soft and warm, even more than usually, and she stretches and turns toward the man sleeping next to her. Clint’s breathing is steady, calming largo so she buries her face against his chest and he doesn’t even stir. She remains like that, listening to symmetric beat of his heart, the full thump – thump – thump echoing under her palm. She remains like that for couple of minutes, until last remnants of sleep are gone.
She gets up, goes to the bathroom collecting Clint’s shirt from last night on the way hoping it would somehow contain his warmth. It doesn’t, but it still smells of him, which distracts her from the cold floor boards under her bare feet. She finds her thick woolen socks in the bathroom and pulls them on as she sits on the toilet. The wool is rough and it scratches while she brushes her teeth and observes her reflection. Her face in the mirror shows lack of sleep, but she’s not complaining about that. Then she goes to the kitchen, makes herself a cup of black tea (strong) and wanders into the living room.
Two cellos rest in the middle of the living room, hers comfortable against the far end of her green sofa, and Clint’s taking up the space in front of the big armchair. She nears it until she can study it from up close. The strings are all neat and the wood is well cared for, but she can see its age, she can see it’s worn, reminding her of an old soldier wearing his best uniform.
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➸ You’re poison, running through my veins by mercscilla

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Fury 
Genres: alternate universe, hurt/comfort, angst | Smut: none 
Word count: 923 | Status: complete

My comment: Another amazing Clintasha AU.

The case has trouble written all over it from the beginning, from the moment they’re called into Commissioner Fury’s office. Someone has given the department a tip to take a closer look at recent deaths of high society men that were determined to be sudden heart attacks with no foul play involved. According to the little birdie though, they’re anything but ordinary deaths. Unfortunately, the source is found dead the next morning near the river but Fury decides to investigate further, turning the case over to Clint and Coulson.
“You never miss a thing, Barton,” the Commissioner tells him and he’s right. Only a few days later, after hours of digging, Clint finally finds something, the one thing connecting the deaths. Each man has died within the next 48 hours after visiting the infamous nightclub Spider’s Web.
The men of the upper class love it, for what happens behind the scene is every man’s dream of sin coming true. Of course, it’s never acknowledged they’re part of the debauchery taking place in the rooms beyond the club and getting the information from the families of the deceased is quite the battle. Sins belong to the night, are the words they hear over and over again. Never to see the light of day.
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➸ girl leave your boots by the bed by sweetwatersong

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: romance | Smut: none 
Word count: 462 | Status: complete

My comment: Short and beautiful Clintasha fic with perfect characterisation.

Another day, another mission, another SHIELD safe house with red clay bootprints on the carpeted stairs, bloodstains on the floral hallway pattern. Clint would feel bad about it, really, but any agent who outfitted a bolthole should know better than to imitate Martha Stewart’s tastes in a place meant to be shot up and blown to hell. Maybe they’ve already resigned from SHIELD and taken up interior decorating, the archer thinks almost grimly as he opens the master bedroom door with one hand, supporting Natasha with the other.
Once the spacious shower and wall of mirrors reveal that the worst injuries are deep scrapes and bad grazes only, he thinks a little more kindly of the unknown agent. It doesn’t keep him from tromping through the pristine white bedroom in his unlaced and dripping boots. The beautiful queen-sized quilt he sinks onto, however, does give him a pang of guilt.
Natasha opens one of the sun-ward windows, letting a fresh breeze in to clear out the steam and stale air. She pauses there afterwards, raw hands resting on the windowsill as the spare set of sweats hangs on her shoulders, off her hips and the knee she keeps half-bent. He understands, appreciates too the rare moment of peace; for all that they are nominally running, there is no danger now, no need to watch for shadows in the suburban streets or around the magnolia trees.
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➸ compass rose ‘verse (series) by sweetwatersong

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: alternate universe, hurt/comfort, romance | Smut: none 
Word count: 3303 | Status: work in progress

My comment: A merman!Clint and pirate!Natasha AU! One of my favourites. Beautifully written.

“‘S that way,” Clint managed to say, blinking as he pointed towards a stretch of horizon almost no different from any other. The argument might have held more weight if his finger hadn’t drifted from side to side.
“I’m sure it’s not,” Natasha replied, lips curving in a faint smile despite herself. She let out an ‘oomph’ when he pulled abruptly on her shoulder, sagging down into the cold water.
“It is,” he countered with an annoyed curl of his lip. “‘m a merman, Tasha, I always know which way the poles are, ‘s part of being part shark.“ He tapped his very human nose with his free hand.
"I don’t think the sun sets in the north,” the pirate told him, leaning to the side to get a better grip under his dorsal fin. Clint blinked again, processing that.
“Oh.”
“I think that porpoise hit you harder than you realized. Even your skull has limits.” Curling her fingers around the smooth human skin of his arm, she braced her foot and heaved. The unresisting merman slid out of the ocean into her small craft, his long tail slithering into the bottom and curling around the mast.
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➸ Perilous Business by SidheRa

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Bucky, Yelena Belova
Genres: alternate universe, romance | Smut: none 
Word count: 12018 | Status: indefinite hiatus

My comment: A beautiful Clintasha Pacific Rim AU, I only wish the author finishes the story, at least the last chapter can still be called an ending, sort of.

“Widow, it’s behind us!” James shouted, even though he didn’t need to. He was brash, even for an American, and he’d never quite broken the habit of speaking out loud when they were drifting.
Not like Yelena. Natasha couldn’t remember if they’d ever said anything to each other when they were linked.
She rolled her eyes pointedly at James, knowing he could feel her reaction even if he couldn’t see it. They turned as one, moving the jaeger as smoothly as something the size of a building could move.
“I told you not to call me that, Barnes,” she said, and they raised their arm to grab hold of the kaiju by the neck.
He laughed.
“Just admit it already, Widow.” he said, emphasizing the nickname. “I know you like it. I’m in your head, remember?”
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➸ After The War by ashen_key

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: alternate universe, romance, fluff, family | Smut: none 
Word count: 487 | Status: complete

My comment: Clintasha WWII AU, it’s short, cute and fluffy.

Sergeant Clinton Barton had plans now that the war was over. To be honest, he’d been forming these plans since Bastogne, where he had spent far too long sitting in freezing foxholes waiting for the Germans to bomb the shit out of his company.
In no particular order, these plans were:
Move somewhere where it didn’t snow;
Get out the hell of the army, and;
Track down that genius redhead who worked for the British Foreign Office and see if she wanted to walk out again.
There’d been other girls, particularly in Austria once victory had been declared, but Natalia Romanoff? She’d been something, all right. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d found herself another man, but he’d be disappointed.

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➸ Spare Me Over Another Year by CloudAtlas

Warnings: character death (but not really) 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Bobbi, Pepper 
Genres: alternate universe, romance, hurt/comfort | Smut: none 
Word count: 9324 | Status: complete

My comment: Clintasha AU, where Natasha is the Angel of Death. It’s heartbreaking, it’s brutal, it’s beautiful.

She remembers very little of her actual, human, life. Only flashes and sensations. She remembers the smell of the animals, and of fur pelts; the cold of the snow and the warmth of the fire.
Long ago, when she was a young woman, she was accused of practicing magic; a child she had been tending had fallen ill and died. It was not her fault, she had tried to save the girl, but she could not and she was cast out of her village.
She died in the snow in the forest where she grew up.
The Elders of her village told stories then, about the woman in the forest who killed and ate children. The lone woman became three, who became sisters, who became old and deformed, living in a walking house and flying through the sky in a bowl, helping or waylaying travellers depending on their whim. And eventually those three sisters were given a name – Baba Yaga.
The stories were never true, not really, but they became true in a way. She shifts – changes with the telling, because she was never really dead, see? She woke up in that same snow the next day. She dug herself out of the snow knowing that she could never go back, could never again show her face in the village in the forest where she grew up, because she was dead.
But not really.
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➸ forgeries and fire (series) by ohladybegood

Warnings: graphic descriptions of violence
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Fury, Coulson 
Genres: hurt/comfort | Smut: none 
Word count: 3826 | Status: complete

My comment: Basically the stories of Clint and Natasha and their beginnings.

There is a saying: they hang the thief who stole 5 kopecks, and honor the one who stole 50. She says, “there is red in my ledger,” but what she means is, they honor me, in Russia.
At the beginning of things—at the beginning of all things—there was fire. She has no memories earlier than this. She had parents, because she has DNA, but she can’t remember their faces. There are no days at the beach, there are no winters bundled up in their shared bed in a condemned building in the heart of Stalingrad. There is fire, and then Ivan’s hands, warm and callused. Smoke curled around her ankles like fingers. His gun had struck her legs as they ran.
Yuri is only a few years older than she is, but he takes her in stride, this new thing that his father brings home. He calls her TashTash, until she hits him to make him stop. Than he calls her spider, and neither of them know why.
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➸ طائر غريب (Strange Bird) by CloudAtlas

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: alternate universe (ish), hurt/comfort, angst | Smut: none 
Word count: 5919 | Status: complete

My comment: Clint was a hawk before he was human. Natasha was a little girl, before she was made into a weapon. A must read :’)

Natasha Romanov’s life was saved by a man who had once been a hawk, though she did not know this at the time.
She was finishing up a mission in Zagreb, an extraction-slash-assassination job with an oil tycoon and all round arsehole, when she turned around and he was just… there. No one had ever managed to sneak up on her before and it unsettled her more than she was willing to admit, even to herself. Her gun was up before she had time to process, but he just looked at her calmly, apparently unfazed by the .9mm pointed right between his eyes.
He had a bow in his hand and a gun at his hip, and, if he was anything like her (and she assumed he must be, because who else would be able to stand within two feet of her without her knowing?) he had more weapons hidden away where she couldn’t immediately see. But he didn’t use them. He just stared at her not blinking and then, telegraphing every move, raised his hand and covered the end of her pistol.
“I’m supposed to kill you,” he said, sounding as if he was coming to the realisation that this was not the most logical course of action. “But I think… I think you should come with me instead.”
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➸ In The Fire (series) byscribblemyname

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: alternate universe, hurt/comfort | Smut: none 
Word count: 1124 | Status: work in progress

My comment: This is a story of how a spider saved a hawk’s life. It’s beautifully mesmerising.

Neither of them remembers where it started. There is eternity and the earth tilting in the heavens, but there is no beginning. They are not human enough yet for beginnings.
A hawk flies over pristine forest, dropping from his mountain heights. A spider weaves her webs where water and hunting are good. The spider watches his flight and leaves her webs for him to find. She never attempts to take to the air herself.
The earth is young yet; there is no man in it—at first.
The hawk learns to read the glisten of her silken strands. It is little wonder, for he is intelligent with a keen eye. He too is wise. He never attempts to seek her out; he merely follows the webs like maps from one to another.
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