A/N: Found this little thing while doing a spring cleaning of my Notes (something that was well overdue). I don't remember when I started this, maybe 2013 or 2014? Haven't touched it in years/months, but I figured it would be nice to fill in the remaining gaps and put it up here like intended. Hope you like it!

"Cold bones, yeah that's my love.

She hides away, like a ghost.

Does she know that we bleed the same way?

Don't wanna cry, but I break that way."

- Where's My Love, SYML

0 Months + 15 days: Denial

It could be said that it was the first time Clint ever thought his partner could look so fragile. Her fiery hair faded to dullness, her ivory skin so translucent it looked paper thin, the life in her eyes, which were always the essence of her soul, dimming.

Just like a marionette held together and upright with strings, the vast amount of stitches over portions of her skin seemed to hold her together too, as if she would fall apart if anyone decided to rip out the strings of her sutured wounds.

There were a group of them down the vertical stretch of her forearm, trailing crookedly along the unintentional cut along one of her vital veins that she'd gotten from the latest mission, nearly killing her. That close shave with death had altered her somehow, as if the adrenaline rush before death was so addictive that she needed to try again. To die again. And so she had stitches across her neck too, holding her throat together from the wound where she'd driven a blade under her skin.

It had to be a lie, that she'd done it just for the rush. And so it was, everything just being a lie like he'd wanted it to be, only to come to a conclusion with her doctors once more that she had been keeping secret her half-decade old diagnosis of a very severe clinical depression. She'd slit her throat to die. That was it. No need for further explanation. She'd wanted to die.

He didn't exactly know where to start - to be mad at Natasha for having kept something that severe from him, as if it was one of the many invalid things that she decided to exclude from her life, or to be mad at himself because he should've known.

He worked with her, he befriended her, they fussed, cussed and laughed at terrible breakfast oatmeal together, fought on the same team, and had a beautifully tragic love affair with themselves, which was unearthed by a very gleeful Tony with a grin resembling those of the Cheshire Cat.

Until the day that he'd learned about her illness, he thought that he'd already known her inside out, and outside in. Whenever his mind roamed towards wondering how Natasha had kept it so well under wraps, forced grins and chuckles and affectionate pecks like it was nothing, it made him sick that he never once called her bluff.

So maybe she was an actress, one that could pull flawlessly stellar performances that would deceive anyone, but thus far he'd been able to see through every single one of them. Maybe she'd just gotten too good at it, or maybe she'd been this good all along.

Clint braced himself - like he'd been doing nonstop for the past two weeks - and took a step into her ward, then two. The door creaked, the bottom of his right sneaker squeaked. Both sounds hurt his ears, and for two seconds he had looked right at her in hopes of her chest expanding to turn. In hopes of her moving at all. Nothing happened, though, and his hopes vanished within that instant itself.

He inhaled, then exhaled, then shut his eyes standing two feet from the empty doorway. He wasn't going to deny himself of the right to believe that she was going to be better today. Maybe Natasha would look at him, maybe she'd talk, maybe - if just for a brief second - her lips would twitch in the likes of the slightest of smiles. Maybe she'd be happier today. Maybe she'd be better.

Restoring his faith, he walked further into the room until he was by the foot of her bed. It seemed she was asleep, eyes closed, expression serene. Her chest rose and fell evenly under her duvet and sweater.

Straying from the sight of her face a few inches south, with no shadow to make it miraculously vanish, was the cleanly split line that went right across her neck, an obvious scar from her left ear to her right. It was amongst another four silver scars, all worn out and faded with time. They reminded Clint of the precautions he should have taken, of all the premonitions he should have had.

He'd known to have to protect her, having known all these, but it was the case of not having protected her well enough. His mistake. Anything, any excuse, just so he wouldn't let himself hate her more than he detested himself.

Managing a few more steps towards the chair by her bed, he sank into the cold comfort of the seat, desolate, desperate and defeated. He sighed, hunching over to rest his elbows on his knees. He pressed his palms together, as if in prayer, and rested his forehead. None of the tension left his body, even at rest. And he sat there, unwavering as if frozen in time, for what seemed like hours.

"This isn't you, Tasha. I know... I know this isn't you." Clint finally pleaded.

Or maybe it always had been. Deep down, he had the same reckoning as he had many years ago, that maybe self-destruction was all she ever knew. And now, circumstances were forcing them to admit it.

TBC