Natasha spent the first night after the mission sleeping on the floor beside Clint's hospital bed, using her jacket balled up under her head as a pillow. It wasn't comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but she'd had worse in her time, and the medical staff knew her well enough to leave her be. It was pointless to delicately suggest, persuade or even command her to return to her quarters, everyone accepted that would never happen and possibly even result in bodily harm if attempted. An orderly did appear the next day with a roll-away bed and linens, though, for which she gave him a tired smile. He nodded back wordlessly. A tray of bland hospital food began to arrive at every mealtime, and it certainly wasn't for her unconscious partner. Everyone understood; the Black Widow stayed.
There was still work to be done, however... reports to write and dossiers to review. Without her asking, Agent Coulton visited on the second afternoon with a duffel bag filled with her own clothes and toiletries, and her laptop. She didn't think twice about how he got them, she could guess the answer, and she was grateful regardless.
"We can patch you in to your 4 o'clock meeting with Intelligence, but remember to lock the door first, okay?" was all he said. He closed his warm hands on her shoulders and squeezed tightly as they both stared down at her partner. The gesture alone brought tears to her eyes, which he noticed and chose to spare her further awkwardness by wordlessly taking his leave. The Black Widow stayed.
On the third day, Agent Hill and Director Fury came by. They absorbed the scene: her cot pushed up beside his hospital bed, several small tables converted to her office space, open duffel bag on the floor as her wardrobe. The assassin was in a chair next to the archer, his hand in hers while she made notes on a report. She looked up as they came in, but said nothing.
Agent Hill pulled the medical charts from their hook by the bed and began to flip through them, Fury merely sighed. His cyclopian gaze held Natasha's, and finally he spoke. "It wasn't your fault, Romanoff," he said softly.
Natasha shook her head slightly, but said nothing.
"We have this problem nowadays," he continued in his soothing voice, "where before we were just SHIELD agents doing our jobs, and then POOF! A bunch of superheroes with magic hammers and fancy suits show up, and now what are we? We're just humans. We're breakable, and we bleed. And despite our very best efforts, sometimes shit just goes wrong. There is no rainbow bridge to God that is gonna appear and save our asses. We're on our own with what we have, Romanoff, and sometimes that's just gonna be bad goddamn luck."
Fury fell silent, and Hill replaced the charts beside the bed. After a few moments, Natasha slowly shook her head again.
"With respect, Director," her voice was thick with emotion, "Agent Barton told me to stay, and I didn't. I pursued the target when the situation changed, and I was no longer in the area of operation when additional hostiles converged on his position."
"You had bad intel yet you still completed your objective," Hill countered vehemently. "Your mission succeeded, Agent Romanoff. You neutralized your target, recovered your partner and made it to extraction."
Natasha looked back down at her partner, pale and broken under a tangle of gauze and tubing, and whispered, "I should have stayed."
The director and his deputy exchanged a long, thoughtful look, and quietly left the hospital room. The Black Widow stayed.
On the evening of the fourth day, Bruce Banner came to visit. He had brought flowers, in two vases. He neatly arranged them on a table. "Do you know about the language of flowers?" he asked Natasha, and she shook her head in reply. "It's a Victorian thing," he continued. "Like a coded message. Every flower represents a different concept, often things it wasn't polite to discuss aloud in Victorian society... like love and passion and stuff like that."
Natasha put her laptop aside and looked at him, curiously. "Oh?"
"Yeah, they would give each other little 'talking bouquets' as secret messages. I thought you'd get a kick out of that... Victorian-era floral cryptography."
The assassin actually smiled, something that hadn't happened since their last mission, Bruce had been told. She stood up and walked over to the bouquets. "So what are these, then?"
Bruce smiled back at her. "Well, this one is for Clint," he said, pointing to a small vase brimming over with lovely smelling delicate pink flowers. "These are eglantines, they are also called sweet briar roses. They stand for healing, get well wishes for the wounded. There is ivy here, too... that's for endurance. I think it suits Clint pretty well."
Natasha chuckled softly, and Bruce continued. "Then this one, this is for you."
The second bouquet was larger, a clash of different shapes and colours. "The tall ones here are white poppies, those are consolation, and the orchids are for beauty. The stripy orange lilies are for loyalty. The marigolds are for grief, and pain..." he paused, watching carefully as Natasha closed her eyes.
She slipped one of her small, cold hands into his, and he squeezed gently. "But this one here, Tasha?" Her eyes opened, he was pointing at a small yellow flower that she'd seen many times before, almost like a dandelion. "That's hawksbeard," he grinned. "And that means protection."
"Really?" she reached out and lightly touched one of the cheery yellow blooms.
"Swear to God," Bruce replied solemnly.
"That's really neat," she said softly. "How do you know all this?"
Bruce shrugged. "Picked it up somewhere, I don't remember. I was probably trying to impress a girl in college." His eyes twinkled, and Natasha chuckled. "I have a book about it, if you're interested. And there is a florist off 9th Ave who specializes in talking bouquets."
"Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that. Thanks, Bruce. That's really thoughtful of you."
He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and nodded. "Sure, it's nothing."
They both turned away from the flowers, towards the hospital bed, and engaged in awkward small talk about her partner's condition. Mercifully, Bruce did not remain long, leaving soon afterwards with the promise to send over the flower book. The Black Widow stayed.
She started giving Clint a running commentary of her days. "Oh, hey," she exclaimed on the fifth morning, reading email and drinking a cup of terrible coffee. "Your new phosphorus arrows were approved! That's good news. You should get better, we'll go try them out somewhere."
Most of her observations would conclude that way. "There is a big party at Stark Towers coming up, you should get better." "It's a full moon tonight, everyone is gonna be up on the flight deck, you should get better." "It's Agent Huang's birthday, I heard they are having red velvet cake. You should get better." And whether he could hear her or not, he did seem to be following her advice. He was still unconscious, but they had weaned him off the ventilator that afternoon and Natasha thought maybe some colour was returning to his face. And still, the Black Widow stayed.
On the sixth day, true to his word, a courier arrived with the flower book from Bruce. Natasha flipped through it with interest for quite a while, reading parts of it aloud to Clint.
"In floriography, ox-eye daisies represent patience. Those are definitely not for me," she commented wryly, "I need one for impatience." She took a quick glance at the index. "Ahh, here we go. Yellow Balsam. Found in damp places, these yellow flowers develop pods which forcefully explode when ripe, ejecting its seeds for some distance." She raised her eyebrow. "Yikes. You'd better watch out. Keep me waiting for you like this and I'll forcefully explode." She paused, and added softly. "You should get better."
Natasha sighed, pushed a rogue red curl behind her eye, and stood up. She hovered beside her partner's bed for several moments, gazing down at him while her eyes filled with tears. Eventually she picked up one of his cold hands, and gently sat down next to him with his hand clutched in her lap. She sighed again and reached over to brush his hair from his forehead.
"Clint..." she started, her voice very small, "... I don't know what to do without you. I'm so lost, and that really scares me." She glanced over at the book. "There are a million different kinds of love in that book, I had no idea. There's First Love, Ardent Love, Hopeless Love, Passionate Love, Forsaken Love..." she trailed off, resting her hand alongside his cheek. An errant tear slipped down her face and splashed onto his hand.
"I hope you can forgive me," she whispered. "It's my fault this happened. And I'll be sorry forever, but I'm just figuring this all out. I'd always been taught that love was... not real, love was a tool, something to be used against a target. Everything I've been feeling, I didn't understand, and it upset me. They were all emotions I'd been taught to fear."
She brought her hand back down to her lap, holding his tightly and rubbing the back of his hand with both of her thumbs. She was momentarily distracted by how large and rough his hand was, how calloused the pads of his fingers were from years of bowstrings. She raised his hand to her face, careful of his IV, and pressed it against her damp cheek. The roughness was comforting, appealing even... this was the hand that always had her back, this was the strength that had always kept her alive.
"I understand it now, Clint," she continued. "Love isn't a single thing, it's not the weapon I thought it was. Love is dynamic, it's a swirling pool of all these different emotions. The Love of morning glories and dandelions, lime and mallow, those are Loves I fear. But there are other Loves. The Loves of red tulips, of primroses. Of heliotrope. I think I have those Loves, Clint. I don't know what to do with them, though. I don't know how I could ever be good enough for you. I don't know how to love someone when every way I know how to show love is a weapon. But please don't leave me. I want to learn how to be good enough for you. Please."
She was crying in earnest now, tears running freely into the palm of his hand where she held it against her face. "It's the Love of rain lilies, Clint," she whispered against his palm. "Rain lilies say, 'I must atone for my sins'. But they also say, 'I love you back'. I would give you rain lilies every day, if you'll forgive me."
And the Black Widow wept. She wept for every time he smiled at her and it twisted her gut but she didn't understand why. She wept for every act of loyalty or reverence he had ever shown her that had confused rather than graced her. She wept for every bullet, every knife, every punch he had ever taken that she mistook for carelessness and now saw for sacrifice. She wept because it was only now, through this strange cryptography, that she could see something that had escaped her for years.
The Black Widow wept, her tears warming the hand she held, so hopelessly lost in them that she missed the first twitch of his fingers against her. It was only when his thumb pushed softly, slowly, across the tears on her cheek, that she gasped and opened her eyes. Her gaze flew to her partner's and her eyes met his - stormy blue and clear. And open.
"Tasha," he murmured, struggling to speak, and she nearly choked with gratitude. She collapsed against him, sobbing against his torso as he blinked in mild confusion. He raised his free hand to her hair, clutching at her soft red curls. "Tasha?"
She raised her face to his, and her smile was both the sun and the stars. He reached out, his hand trembling, and he pressed his fingers against her wet cheek. "Y..y.. you.. you're crying...?" his voice was barely a whisper.
Still beaming, she shook her head and wiped her tears on her sleeve. "No," she laughed. "I'm fine. I'm fine now. I'm so happy you're awake! Are you okay? How are you feeling, does it hurt anywhere? I'll get the doctor..." she was rambling with relief and he gave her a faint smile.
"Slow down, Natasha," he croaked, touching her lips gently. "I need to say something to you. Do... do you mean what you just said? Just now?"
She hesitated and sat upright, biting her lower lip and looking very vulnerable. "Yes," she blurted out after a moment.
"I'm not leaving you, ever," he said, and her eyes went large and luminous. "Yes, I love you, I have forever, and my love is..." he paused, taking a moment as his throat tried to close over. "My love," he breathed, "is the Love of jasmine."
Natasha's brow furrowed, and he closed his eyes with a smile, exhausted yet content with his statement. She reached over and grabbed the book, quickly leafing through the pages.
"Unconditional and eternal," she murmured, and he nodded. "You really heard me," she realized.
"Every word. I forgive you for disobeying my orders, it's not your fault all this happened but mostly I'm sorry I missed Huang's red velvet cake."
She laughed, and it was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. "Can we go try my new arrows now?" he murmured.
She shook her head, picking his hand back up and dropping a kiss into his palm. "No," she chuckled. "You're going to stay right here until I'm satisfied that you're not going to die on me."
"Nat," he whispered. "Go get some sleep. Don't punish yourself by watching over me."
She pressed several more kisses into his hand. "Not a chance, Barton. You know how I feel now. I'm not taking the risk that you'll climb out the window to escape me as soon as I leave the room."
He wheezed in amusement, in pain from head to toe but happier than he had ever been in his entire life.
And the Black Widow stayed.