"Nightmares again?"
"How'd you know?"
"We're partners aren't we? We're supposed to know everything about each other."
"I haven't told you everything, Clint."
"I respect that, you'll tell me eventually, but for now, I'll have to infer."
She wanted nothing more than to take it all back, the arguments, the denial, the screaming, the hatred. "Come on, wake up. Say some stupid comment that will nearly get you killed. Insist you're fine, break rules. Just please, open your eyes." Her hand grasped in his firmly, tightly, tears threatening to soak his hand in mascara filled drops. "So help me God Clint, I'll kill you once you wake up." She tried to chuckle but it came out strangled, forced, and escalated into a choked sound of held back emotions. "You promised me Clint!"
He didn't respond, but rather, laid there in silence, eyes closed.
"I should've stayed with you instead of going with Steve. Maybe you'd be alright."
"Why are you leaving?"
"Cap can't be the only one helping the case Clint, he still has to get a hand on this world."
"He's had long enough hasn't he?"
"Stop being so selfish."
"I'm not being selfish! I just want to know what I did wrong."
"What are you talking about?"
"I want to know why you don't want us to work together anymore."
"No Clint that's not it! I'm just going to help him! You're still my partner I promise!"
"You love him. Don't you?"
She regretted how raw her voice felt after that fight. She regretted not talking to him for months, or how he didn't even cross her mind once. But of course the latter was a lie. She never answered his question on her love for Steve because she couldn't. She couldn't tell Clint no, he would have never believed her. She would have told him the truth, which she wasn't even sure she could handle.
"Clint I am so sorry. I should've called, or wrote or at least apologized some how."
"Natasha, are you okay?"
"I'm fine Steve."
"You look distracted, upset even."
"I'm fine."
"What happened with him?"
"I don't know why you assume it's because of Clint."
"You're fire and rain, but somehow manage to stick together. But your fire is out right now Natasha, and he's the only one capable of making it disappear."
"Agent Romanoff, you should probably get some rest. We'll get you if he decides to wake up." A nurse walked into the room and stayed a good five feet away from the red head. Natasha was known for attacking anyone who managed to sneak up on her.
"I'm fine."
"It's Director Fury's orders."
"I don't give a fuck about what he said. I am not leaving this room."
"Agent Romanoff it's for the-"
"Leave her be Susan, she won't listen to you. Let me handle this," a familiar male voice said. Sadly, it wasn't Clint's.
Once she was sure that the nurse had left the room, Natasha let her shoulders sink a little.
"Natasha, whether you like it or not, the nurse is right, Fury is right, you need to sleep, eat, and you could definitely use a shower."
"Go away Tony." She buried brought her knees to her chest and buried her face between them. "I don't need any of that."
He took a seat beside her, but didn't try to touch her shoulder. "He wouldn't want you to sit here and drain yourself worrying over him. He'd at least want you to eat, sleep in a real bed for a few hours, and shower. He'll be fine in here, I'll bring a bed down if it would help you, but you still need to eat and clean up."
"What if he wakes up while I'm gone?"
"I'll stay here while you're out."
"What if-" she took a deep shaky breath, holding back tears. "What if he dies while I'm gone?"
"I'll find you and take you here. I'll sit with you as long as you need me to. I'd do the things he'd want me to."
"Romanoff."
"Natasha, something's happened."
"Tony if this concerns you and Pepper, I'm sorry, I don't care. I just want to enjoy being home ."
"It concerns Clint."
Her heart stopped.
"You still there?"
"What happened?"
"Don't get mad but-"
"Tony Stark tell me what happened right now!"
"He was sent on a mission a month after you left, he was hurt and it's really bad. He almost bled out and he's now in a coma. Been like this for a good two weeks."
"Two weeks and you didn't call me sooner?"
"Fury said you were working on something with Cap, said it would be better for you not to know until that ended."
"Thanks Tony, I'll be there in five."
She hangs up the phone and slides down her apartment door, holding herself, praying that it will keep her heart from falling apart.
"Hey Clint. It's been a month now, my birthday is coming up. You were the only one I actually told because I trusted you. Then you went and told the whole team and threw me a surprise birthday party." She paused to pull herself together so she wouldn't cry. "I never felt so, appreciated in my whole life in that moment. And it was all because of you. All my favorite moments have you in them, you're the sole cause." There was a lump in her throat again. She tried to hold it back and biting her lip to keep the feeling from escalating, but it just resulted in a swollen bloody lip. "Dammit Clint! Wake up! Clint you're my partner and I'm so sorry for what happened but you can't just die on me! You need to wake up. You promised."
She clutched his limp left hand and traced the callouses on his fingers from using the bow and arrow. The hand that would rest on her shoulder when he pulled her into a hug.
"I don't know if I can trust you yet."
"You can Natasha."
"Everyone I love dies before my eyes."
"I won't."
"How do you know that? Life is unpredictable, especially ours."
"I don't break promises. I promise you Tasha, I will outlive you, regardless of the circumstances. I won't die as long as you're still breathing."
"You can't promise me that."
"I don't break promises. I never do."
Tony kept coming by every day to check on her and Clint. He was the only one that didn't bother to look at her with sympathy, he just told her to calm down with a reassuring smile.
"I forget he can't hear me sometimes. I forget that he's still asleep and when I wake up it hurts to know that he still isn't back yet."
"I know. I expect to see you two coming around the corner arguing while everyone talks about you two getting married."
She let out a pained chuckle, hand squeezing Clint's. "Love is for children. It doesn't work out for screwed up people like me."
"I remember that one time you two went on a mission. Clint was on recon, you were in the field. I've never seen his so stressed out before in my life. He cares about you."
"It's his duty, we're partners."
"Do you remember that time when you two went to Morocco?"
Natasha gave a sad smile and looked at Tony. "Yeah."
"You got a concussion from a bomb explosion and you were in and out of it for a few days. He was so antsy and rude, he snapped at everyone. There was even this time where you didn't wake up for a few days, he looked close to crying and I'm pretty sure he did when he thought no one was around."
"What's the point of this story?"
"You eventually woke up, so will he. Clint wouldn't want you to have to start over with a rookie. Or go out alone. I may not know him as well as you do but I know he's a fighter and too damn stubborn to die."
"Hey Tasha?" Midnight beams carry through the blinds.
"What Clint?" Her voice was husky, eyes were sleep filled.
"What would you be doing if you weren't a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?"
"I'd probably be dead Clint. S.H.I.E.L.D. probably would have killed me eventually."
"Not what I meant Nat. If you were never a part of the Red Room, you were just a normal person living in Russia, what do you think you'd be doing now?"
"Probably living in Russia."
"Natasha..."
"Fine. I don't know honestly, I'd have to dream up a life. All I've known is Red Room, I can't just think of another, that would be planning my whole life from the beginning. I don't know who I am without Black Widow." Silence followed her answer. "What about you?"
"I'd probably still be with the circus. Or maybe off alone as a homeless man begging pretty girls like you for money."
"I wouldn't let you be homeless Clint, not alone at least." They both laughed, even in the dark confines of their room. "We're still destined to be partners, regardless the situation."
She still sat there, eyes blurred from sleep, from held in tears. He was still there, in bed, no movement from him but the slight rise and fall of his chest. Her hair was matted, greasy, and stringy from her messing with it too much without a shower.
On nights like this, she thought, he'd hold me while we sleep. We'd both be fighting off nightmares.
She traced lines of his palm and fingertips, ignoring the sparks left in the absence. "Partners to the end right?" Her hand cupped his cheek and her smile came off as a sad acceptance. "I really hope this isn't your last chapter. You're too good to die from this. We're partners, we're supposed to grow old, get fat, and protest going into a nursing home. We were supposed to link hands together when old age finally becomes too much. We're supposed to go together at eighty or ninety, not thirty or forty." She paused to take a deep breath to stop the tears from flowing out. "You can't die on me Clint. You're my partner. My one and only. And I don't know how I'd go on if you don't make it through this."
Natasha let out sobs that she's been holding in for a month and a half. They shake her body and her heart. "Who's gonna chase my nightmares away? Or spar with me? You better not leave me Barton." She wiped her eyes and stared at the man in front of her. "A long time you asked me what I was afraid of, and I lied to you. I'm not afraid of heights, small spaces, spiders, men from the Red Room, none of them. I'm not scared of death. I'm scared of you Clint. It's always been you." Her thumb traced the lines of his cheekbones, her eyes scanned for other signs of life. She sighed numerous times, tired of the waiting but would rather wait than showing up in a church dressed in black.
"Glad you're back Clint."
"Miss me Tasha?"
"No. That shade of blue just doesn't work with your eyes."
She missed the steel gray his eyes had. They'd change from blue to gray daily, but all he could see was the tan color of his eyelids, freckles faint. He looked so old but yet too young to die. Too angry to look peaceful in sleep but too happy to give his life up now.
"I said you should've gotten more sleep Clint, now look at you, sleeping for two months and counting." Natasha had taken to holding his hand with fingers wound together instead of just holding his wrist. It was too much to stick the pads of her fingers on his pulse point, she didn't want to know, she didn't want to feel his heart beat slow down. She'd settle for the heartbreaking heart monitor moan that would sound if he died. A sound that had been plaguing her mind and nightmares since she found out of his comatose state.
"Agent Romanoff."
"Director Fury." She didn't look to the door, she stared out the window instead.
"You need to get some air."
"I think I'll decide what I need sir."
He sighed from across the room holding in anger that she undoubtedly caused. She always wondered whether or not Fury was a nickname or a sheer coincidence.
"When's the last time you worked out?"
"Last week."
"Go to the gym."
"Director-"
"Now. If you don't go I will make it an order."
Sending her to workout was the best idea Fury ever had in her opinion. She could forget what was going on in the medical wing. Her punches and kicks were flawless, fueled nothing by anger. It wasn't until she saw red on the bag, did she finally realize her hands were bleeding. She wrapped her hands up in gauze and tried to forget the pain.
Ignore the pain, Natasha. You've dealt with worse.
She moved to the uneven bars and pulled herself up.
High bar.
The adrenaline in rushing and the speed is messing her hair up.
Low bar.
She's so close to touching the ground but she likes being high. It's the rush.
High bar.
He's hurt.
Low bar.
He's in a coma.
High bar.
He hasn't woken up.
Low bar.
You should've been there.
High bar.
You should've been there.
Low bar.
You are pathetic.
High bar.
You shouldn't have left. You're a monster.
She lost grip and fell onto the mat, back slamming against it. The wind was knocked out of her but she liked the feeling, maybe she could stop breathing and die, the fate she knew she deserved. Her eyes stung with tears, her head ached with memories, her heart sunk with guilt.
Clint.
Why him?
A good man dying because of his terrible partner. Regardless if she wasn't there, it would always be her fault. Clint was her responsibility as much as she was his.
She cried, as much as she'd like to deny it. She don't sob, didn't make noise, she just broke down, silently, like everything else she did. She clutched her chest, maybe that would keep the blood from her heart seeping out, maybe it would keep the broken pieces together, maybe it would feel like Clint's warm embrace.
"Natasha, you need to come right now." It was Tony who was standing in the doorway. He was the only Avenger to really talk to her. Thor wasn't big on feelings and knew he couldn't comfort her when he didn't know Clint that well. Bruce would visit some but kept his distance. Steve didn't try to comfort her because he knew she blamed him subconsciously.
"What do you want Tony?"
"He's awake."
Natasha jumped up and ran out of the room. She didn't look back and pushed against people to get to the hospital wing. They looked at her funny when she sprinted to his room, but they seemed to understand.
"That's his partner," they'd say. "I want a love like that."
She couldn't remember a time where she ran that fast, not even on a mission gone wrong. Her hands pushed through the door to his room and stood breathless in front of his gray blue eyes. They burned a hole in her and caused a stirring in her stomach.
"You're an asshole."
"Hello to you too."
That voice. It was so raw, so deep, and so his. It was incredibly comforting. They were alone and it scared her, just her partner and herself, the mentally unstable red head.
"You were asleep two months and I was here alone. You had me worried to death Clint Barton and there was nothing I could do about it! You can't just go and almost die on me, not when I'm not here. And you certainly can't wake up when I'm not here."
"Nat, you okay?" His eyes looked concerned as he waved her over to his bedside.
"I hate you." She pointed a finger at him and didn't bother to come any closer. "You were all I could think about and I couldn't do anything but worry if you were going to make it out of this. You were the center of my attention. I was going insane and you have the guts to expect a civil greeting from me Barton? Do you not understand how scared everyone was? How scared I was? Do you not understand that you could've died at anytime and we would have just sat there because there was nothing we could do?"
"Nat-"
"Don't 'Nat' me, I'm not falling for it again Barton. You can't just automatically think that all will be right by using that nickname."
He tugged her wrist to come closer, all the while forcing her to sit in the chair. "Nat, are you crying?" His hand came up to touch little watery tracks down her cheeks.
"You're an idiot Barton. I hate you." She laughed a little, grasping the hand that came to rest on her cheek.
"I'm your idiot right?"
"No, you're just my problem."
This is my first Clintasha fic I've ever written. Hopefully I'll have another one out soon in time. If you have any helpful advice I'm all ears. Reviews would be lovely, but if you don't want to, no big deal. If you have any prompts or anything of the sort feel free to leave those in your review. Thanks for reading!