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Clint hefted the hare over his shoulder and turned back around. Should he stay here and see if he could find another or try a different spot? He suspected that their group had almost eradicated the small game population around the farmhouse and it hurt his heart a little, but they had needed to hunt during the long winter.
Now that spring was coming and the frost was finally thawing, there would be other animals returning from the south. It was still too early in the year for geese, but the ice covering rivers and ponds was getting thinner every day and soon, they would be able to fish without having to keep a fire going nearby.
A week or two after Clint and Bucky had come back and they were about to run out of food again, Sam and Wanda had discovered a pond complete with an ice fishing shanty half a day’s trek away from the farmhouse. Their diet since then had contained little but meat and fish and by now, the problems that came with such a limited, unbalanced diet had begun to get to them.
Steve had been getting sick more and more lately. On some days, he did not even leave his room except to go to the outhouse or lay down in front of the fire in the living room. Wanda often complained about stomach cramps starting up as soon as she ate a bite of meat and two days ago, she’d barely managed to keep her small portion down. She looked pale and drawn, but they all did, didn’t they?
Natasha had found a book on wilderness survival a few weeks ago and had promptly handed it off to Steve and Sam to peruse. Some of the information Clint had already known, but that cattail rootstock was disgusting but high in nutrients? They had introduced the plant to their meal plan with played up disgust and barely hidden relief.
It had also gotten them to return to already looted houses and shacks and huts in search of more helpful books.
Clint stared at the approaching farmhouse, trying to ignore the staticky rustling of the wind in the trees and its howling against the mountain sides. He had gotten used to the sight and the sounds and probably wouldn’t be able to forget either for as long as he lived.
They had decided to stay in the valley. It hadn’t been an easy decision.
Staying meant they could keep hunting and foraging in the woods and eat off the apple orchard eventually. Also, there were other fields attached to the farmhouse and who knew what would grow there once spring came.
On the other hand, they would have to live off the land and none of the others knew more than the basics about farming, gardening, and foraging. Other places could offer more food and even medical supplies. Until they ran out, at least.
Then again, there was a radio tower not too far off and although it wasn’t functional as of now, it was their best bet if they wanted to get off the island; as long as they could find the right spare parts to repair some of the more simple equipment. And the generator.
Clint sighed. It was a constant struggle to only let himself think about the things he could do instead of all the stuff he had no control over. Like whether there even was anyone to come and bring them back to civilisation.
He entered the farmhouse and announced his presence with a banging door and a loud groan.
“Welcome back, Clint,” Steve called from the living room. Clint gave an unintelligible grumble back and slouched to the kitchen, where he deposited the hare on the counter for someone to either take apart or freeze later.
Then, he went looking for warmth. The fire in the living room was low, but the embers radiated an unimaginable amount of heat. “Perfect,” he mumbled, sank into the couch cushions, and let the heat sear his shins and thighs.
Steve laughed lowly. “You good? You were gone a while.“ He was sitting at the table they had carried in here from upstairs for the better lighting and sorting through a pile of foraged pine bark. Part of it was already spread out to dry. When Clint craned his neck, he could see a bowl of chopped pine needles ready to be made into tea.
That as well as rose hip tea was one of the only vitamin sources they had had on this last leg of winter. Although fish and some animal organs also carried valuable vitamins if Sam and Natasha were to be believed.
“Where’s Bucky?” Clint asked.
“Out with Sam. They have to carry the shanty off the ice to solid ground before it cracks and the shanty sinks. Bucky said there were trails he hadn’t checked before and that they probably won’t be back until tomorrow.”
Clint whined. He was exhausted and the thought of spending the night without the heat of another person in his bed was dreadful. It wasn’t as cold at night as it used to be, but that didn’t mean it was anywhere near comfortable. He wondered if he could get Natasha to share with him.
“Maybe Buck will finally find that bunker he’s been fantasising about,” he mumbled. It was hard to keep his eyes open.
“Maybe it’ll contain some toilet paper,” Steve answered. Clint grinned.
“I’ll take it over more expired jerky any day.”
*°*°*
He came awake with a snort. “Hm?”
“Your tea, Clint.”
He turned his head and blinked. Wanda stood behind the couch with a steaming mug in her hand. “No coffee?”
She smiled. “As usual, no coffee.”
He heaved a sigh but obligingly took the mug from her. Pine needle tea didn’t taste like much except, you know, pine, but it did make him feel better. More awake.
“I’m heating up yesterday’s stew if you‘re hungry,” Wanda said and turned back to the kitchen.
“I’m always hungry.” Clint yawned and followed. The hare was gone, so he guessed that Wanda had put it in the freezer. The thing did not have power, but carrying it outside and shoving in blocks of ice – also, barricading it against predators – had solved that problem for now.
The stew didn’t smell like much due to their lack of ingredients and spices. “Maybe some of us should head to the coast to get a couple bags of salt. I’m sure we could come up with a way to get it from the water.” They still had some, but he’d been toying with the idea for a while now. There were bound to be more settlements on the coast than there were inland and maybe there were still people living there. If they’d be willing to get along or would rather rob them blind was another issue altogether, however.
Wanda chuckled. “You and Bucky could go on another trip.”
Clint purred lowly. “Like I’d say no to that.” Them going on post-apocalyptic romantic get-aways had become something of a running gag in their group. One Bucky wasn’t particularly fond of.
Naturally, Clint loved it.
Wanda laughed and Clint suppressed the proud little smile that always tried to form on his lips when he managed to make one of them laugh. “Where’s Nat?”
“Taking a nap,” said a voice from the hallway. Steve entered. “She said to eat without her.”
“Aw.” He was disappointed, kinda. He hadn’t seen much of his best friend lately. Clint spent most of his day hunting and checking on his snares while Natasha alternated between fishing and foraging. Sometimes they took the trip to the ice shanty together, but it was still less time spent with her than he would have liked.
The only people who stayed at the house much were Steve, who couldn’t leave it most days, and Sam, who cooked and tended to their meagre food stores. Bucky often accompanied either Clint or Natasha to provide backup and Wanda mostly spent her time helping anyone with their chores.
That reminded him. “Steve, when are you doing laundry?” Doing laundry mostly meant rinsing their clothes in hot water and drying them in the living room, but for serious stuff, Steve used a bar of wonder soap.
Steve handed him three chipped plates from the cupboard. “Tomorrow. Do you need anything?”
“I got blood and innards on my last good shirt. It kinda smells,” Clint said with a grimace. He put the plates on the table.
“Your blood and innards, or...?”
“Very funny, Steve.”
The man grinned. “Just asking, since Sam isn’t here and all.”
*°*°*
Clint went to bed early after dinner. It wasn’t late, the sun had barely set, but he was weary to his bones. A day of rest would do him some good, but how would he occupy himself? Boredom wasn’t good for the mind, not in their situation. He could practice his archery some, he guessed, or help Steve with the house work.
But Steve always got a little crabby when people offered to help him, still so focused on contributing and not being a burden as he was. Maybe Clint should frame it like he was the one who needed to occupy himself. That could work. Also, it was true.
He threw himself on the bed with a whine. The bedding smelled like Bucky and he buried his face in it and only shifted under the blanket when his feet got too chilly.
He had left his door open to let in warm air from downstairs and some of the sounds of his friends. He couldn’t make out what they said, most of it a dull hum in his ears, but it was enough to let him drift off into a peaceful slumber.
*°*°*
The next day, he chose to listen to his body’s signals and spent most of it inside. He did the dishes, helped Steve with the laundry, and cleaned the ashes from the fireplace and the kitchen stove. The rest of the time he spent on the roof.
They had abolished lookout duty a while ago, after Clint had shot and killed a few wolves who had sniffed around the house. The rest seemed to have realised that trying to steal the human’s prey when they came home brought more trouble than it was worth. There were still a few packs they saw and heard often enough, but there hadn’t been an incident in weeks now.
Still, Clint liked being up here. The farmhouse stood at the lowest point in the Valley, but the open fields and bare trees allowed him to see far and wide. He could make out the red barn in the distance and not for the first time, he wondered if it had once belonged to the family that used to live on the farm. Their farm, now.
Had they owned livestock as well? It would make sense based on the balls of straw and the stacks of hay in the barn. There was another, smaller barn on the edge of the orchard. Its floor had been covered in straw when they found it and there had even been a few separate stalls where small livestock could have lived. Not a lot. Not enough to feed a family, but enough to house a few animals.
When they had gotten here, there hadn’t been any trace of the people who used to live in the house. Clint tried not too think about them too much. Whatever had happened to them, it couldn’t have been good.
Considering the shape the place had been in, then.
Movement near the road caught his eye and tore him from his maudlin thoughts. Two figures, one in a black and one in a red jacket. Sam and Bucky.
He grinned.
Clint hadn’t worried about them, precisely. But it was good to see them come home. He turned, opened the window he sat next to and yelled, “Sam and Bucky are back!” There was some indistinct shout for an answer that Clint didn’t bother to answer. If they wanted to tell him something, they knew to say it when he could hear them properly.
He watched as the two figures stepped off the road and onto the still snowy path leading to the farmhouse. They walked past the small barn and Clint noticed a long, straight shape strapped to Bucky’s backpack.
“Is that what I think it is?” he wondered aloud. He slid down the tiles, dropped to the porch roof and from there, to the ground. A short sprint later and he threw his arms around his partner, blowing a wet kiss against his stubbly cheek.
“Ahoy!” he called. Sam rolled his eyes none too subtly.
“Hey, Clint,” Bucky said and hugged him back.
“Is that a rifle?”
Bucky gave a short laugh. “That is a rifle. Very observant of you.”
“Shut up,” Clint slapped his hand away, excited. “Where did you find it?”
“Somewhere north-east of the pond. We had never gone that far before.” Bucky grinned and turned so Clint could unhook the rifle from his backpack.
“Amazing!” Clint called. “Did you find ammo, too?”
“Some, but not much. We’ll have to be careful not to waste it.”
“Meh. We’ve been getting along fine with my bow, anyway.”
“Yeah, but soon the bear population will all collectively wake up from their beauty sleep and want to eat. And I don’t know how much a bow and arrow will do against a fully grown brown bear.”
Clint sniffed haughtily. “I’ll have you know that an arrow can do just as much damage as a bullet.”
“There, there,” Bucky said and patted him on the arm.
“It was attached to a body, by the way,” Sam interjected suddenly. “Hi, Clint.”
“Sam, you here?” Clint exclaimed. Sam rolled his eyes again.
Bucky threw Sam a dirty look. “The guy clearly didn’t need it anymore. Also, you took what was in his bag, didn’t you?”
“So? I fail to see your point.” Sam started walking again and Clint watched Bucky bristle with some amusement. The two could fight like cats and dogs but they still hung out on the regular. Bucky had probably volunteered to go with Sam to the pond, too.
“What was in his bag?” Clint asked before their “conversation” could reach annoying volume.
“A book,” Bucky said, deadpan.
“Not just any book!” Sam exclaimed. “A book on wilderness kitchen. There’s a recipe for dessert you can make over an open fire and yes, we’ll never have all the ingredients they list, but we could still learn something useful!”
Bucky raised his hand in defence as if to say “don’t look at me, I didn’t say anything” like a liar.
*°*°*
After divesting himself off his backpack, jacket and scarf, Bucky went straight to the couch and laid down. “I forgot how tiring it is to be on the move all day.”
“At least the cold didn’t almost kill you this time.” Clint grinned.
“True that. And the load wasn’t as heavy as it was back then.” Sam and Bucky had brought home a haul of bass and whitefish and Sam had immediately gone to search through his new book for recipes.
Bucky raised his arm. “Come into my arms, princess. Arm. Whatever.”
“Asshole,” Clint said fondly and did just that. With enthusiasm.
“Oof!”
“Be a man and suck it up, shorty!”
Bucky wheezed.
*°*°*
After dinner and to the horror of everyone, Sam announced that he had learned how to make fish oil and planned on producing some from the entrails of today’s dinner.
“Not in here, you won’t,” said Natasha darkly. Her hand was unsettlingly tight around her knife.
“Sam, the smell,” groaned Steve.
“But we can make candles from it!”
“We can?” Steve perked up. The gears were starting to turn in his head, Clint could tell. “I can read at night? No more going to the outhouse in the dark?”
“Soon, the days will be long enough for you to read at two in the morning,” Bucky grumbled. Clint clinked their glasses together. They’d already made plans to board up their bedroom windows for when the time came.
“Whatever, I’m sure I can come up with a way to make an actual lamp, or a lantern.” Steve beamed. “I could use shoelaces as a wick, we got enough of those.”
Bucky sighed fondly.
*°*°*
“Clint, I’ll need your help with something.”
It had rained this morning. Not snowed, rained. The first unfrozen precipitation of the year. Clint was staring at the snow blanket, at where some patches of earth were showing through.
“Huh?”
“You grew up on a farm, right?”
“Huh?” He turned around and stared at Steve. “Oh no.”
Steve groaned. “Clint, please. You’re the only one who knows anything about that stuff.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Me and Buck are from Brooklyn and Sam’s from the Washington area. You think we have any gardening experience? Let alone know how to grow crops? And I don’t know where Wanda and Natasha lived but they’ve already said that they don’t know either.” Steve looked at him pleadingly.
It was Clint’s turn to groan. “I left that farm when I was twelve, you know, I didn’t really get to learn the trade.”
Steve beamed. “Anything helps, really!” He slapped a book onto the living room table. “So, I’ve been looking through the book shelves in the office and I think the farmers here grew potatoes. Which makes sense in this climate.”
Clint gaped.
“And I’ve gone through all these shelves in the basement and I found a big jar of seeds, right, and a couple of smaller jars with different seeds. Some of them were labeled, some weren’t. But I think the ones in the big jar are potato seeds. Would make sense, you know?”
Before Clint could answer, Steve kept going. He was on a roll and Clint had to concentrate hard to catch all the words. “And there are agriculture and gardening magazines, even some actual books on growing vegetables in low temperatures. And they’re talking about fertiliser and compost, but I don’t know—”
“I do. That stuff’s pretty easy actually.”
Steve looked at him, surprised. “Yeah?”
“I mean, we don’t have much to compost yet and the only fertiliser we used came from cows, but I think Sam could help us with that. You can make fertiliser from bones and stuff.” Clint was a little surprised, too. Ever since leaving that place, he had actively suppressed all memory of it, but some things... Some things just stuck with you, and it weren’t always the bad ones.
“One of the books has a chapter on fertiliser, actually,” Steve said thoughtfully. “It mostly talked about industrially produced fertiliser, but I find it hard to believe that whoever lived here ordered it online and had it delivered.”
Clint chuckled. “Definitely hard to believe. I bet they used the manure from whatever animals lived in the small barn. Or maybe there was another farmer breeding livestock in the area who delivered tanks full of that stuff.”
Steve made a face.
“Yes, you’re imagining the smell correctly,” Clint said and couldn’t help but grin. “So, what were you saying about those seeds?”
*°*°*
Minutes later, Clint sat on the ground in the basement with an array of jars in front of him. “These are lettuce seeds,” he mumbled. His mother had had a medium sized vegetable garden. Her seed collection had looked much the same.
“I don’t know these. Wait.” He brought the jar closer to his face and stared hard at the peeling tape. “I think this says ‘turnip’.”
“It does?” Steve exclaimed and took the jar from him.
“These could be radishes, but I’m not completely sure.” He handed another jar off to his friend. “And these are definitely tomato seeds. But good luck growing any in this climate without burlaps and tarps. Or a greenhouse.”
“There’s a greenhouse in Thompson’s Crossing.”
“Huh?” Clint looked up. “Well, good luck bringing it here, buddy.”
Steve crossed his arms. “We could disassemble it and bring it here. There might also be more seeds there.”
“How many trips would that take, man?” Clint asked, almost exasperated.
“I could build a sled!”
“Huh.” A sled would actually be pretty nice. They wouldn’t have to drag their bigger kills by its hooves all the way home anymore. “Huh.”
“Or when the snow has melted, we could use a cart. I’m sure there’s one in one of the barns or at Thompson’s Crossing.”
“That’s not actually a bad idea,” Clint mumbled. “That might work.”
“And we could grow vegetables in winter!”
“I— we’d have to keep it heated somehow—”
“We can figure out a way to do that.”
“I’m sure.” Clint didn’t know when they had started to stop hoping for rescue, but it must have been sometime during the last couple of weeks. Maybe when they had decided to stay at the farm. Now, Sam was thinking about making fish oil so they’d have candles and yesterday, Wanda had mentioned wanting to learn how to find medical plants in the woods and last week Bucky had said that he wouldn’t mind living here so much as long as the food got better and fuck.
Clint had worked a dead-end office job back home, one that didn’t compensate for overtime but demanded it anyway, had lived in a run-down, shabby apartment to safe money for adventure trips and tried not to feel lonely when he came home and hadn’t heard from Nat in a week and the underlying, unfocused anxiety that had permeated all of his life back then had been replaced by underlying, focused anxiety that knew what caused it and what it needed to disappear and fuck.
Maybe they were right about making a life here. But he wasn’t ready to think about that yet.