This one shot is a companion piece for my story Bruises and takes place between chapters 25 and 26 when Natasha is rushed back to a SHIELD base for surgery but it could be read as a stand alone piece. I'd love to know what you think of it.

Just Stay

Exhaustion reigned as he walked the seemingly endless expanse of tarmac from the helicopter to medical. He couldn't track what was going on around him, didn't hear the words that were spoken, all he saw was red. He was covered in blood, some of it his, most of it hers, and he knew that the story of what had happened was written all over him. Blood and sand clung to his skin, staining him for everyone to see.

He accompanied the gurney into the medical wing and found Carter waiting to greet them. Her eyes were calm and collected but even she couldn't conceal her reaction at what was brought before her. Clint knew that he was a state; the truth was in the expression of every person who had seen him since they found him on his knees in the desert with her body. He could barely walk, every step taken increasing the likelihood that he would face plant the tiled floor before they reached their final destination and still he looked better than Natasha. He didn't care about his own aches and pains, would bleed out before he let them give priority to his care over that of his partner.

God she was so still. Natasha hadn't stirred or opened her eyes since she had passed out in his arms over thirty minutes earlier. It wasn't Natasha, not really, Natasha could be still but it wasn't this kind of stillness, she was never limp and lifeless, not even when she slept. She was always moving, always poised, always ready. The still woman in front of him, her pale skin painted with streaks of red, is not his partner but her ghost. The hand that he clutched in his own, the only thing that remained in perfect focus, was cold, her pulse weak and fluttering at her wrist like a birds.

The gurney punched through the double doors of the operating room and Carter and her team converged on them, gently easing him out of the way so that they could attach a blood pressure monitor to her finger and set up imaging equipment around the bed. He watched them, unable to fight the exhaustion that swept through him now that her hand was no longer clasped in his. A powerful trembling lit off in his fingers and swept through his body causing him to list against the wall.

"Get him out of here," called Carter's second in command, "he's bleeding for Christ's sakes!"

Nursing staff moved to help him and he shoved them away, forcing himself upright though he could barely summon the strength. Knowing that if he couldn't stay on his feet they would force him into a wheelchair and remove him from the room, he reached deep into his muscles and bones and found the strength that he needed. He was not about to leave her. "Not leaving her," he managed to grind out, planting one bloodstained palm against the tiled wall to keep himself on his feet.

"You're injured Agent," the doctor protested, putting himself right in Clint's line of vision, as if he hadn't somehow noticed the blood or the pain. He could read agitation in the doctor's body language but he was too far gone to care about what the man might be feeling. "Fury will tear us a new one if we let one of his best assets bleed out because you were too stubborn to let us help you."

Fear turned to gasoline in his blood, igniting his temper as the doctor unwittingly gave him the verbal equivalent of napalm. He shrugged the doctor's hand away violently, turning a gaze onto the man that made him flinch. "I'm fine," he announced coldly, "now see to my partner or Fury's anger will be the last of your problems."

Silence descended on the OR, nurses and surgical assistants turning their heads to watch the commotion that was unfolding in the corner of the room. Every head but Carter's was turned in his direction, hers was facing Natasha, assessing the wounds that needed to be treated. "I need your heads in the game," she commanded, authority ringing in her voice. "Somebody get Agent Barton a chair and some gauze padding so that he can slow the bleeding from that leg wound while we patch up Agent Romanoff."

"I can stand," he protested, "focus on her Doc."

For the first time Carter's eyes rose from Natasha's body to meet his own. There was no room for argument in her gaze, no compromise of wills, in this room she was the law and she knew it. "I will focus on her Agent when I no longer have to worry that another agent is about to hit the deck in my OR. You're injured and in need of treatment but having you here might work to my advantage in this case," someone wheeled in a chair and placed it close enough to the operating table that he would be able to see her but not so close that he would be in the way, "now sit your ass down."

Feeling like a scolded child, he sank into the chair and accepted the gauze that was handed over to him. "Don't worry about me Doc," he told her, "I'm not going to be collapsing any time soon."

"I'm stating a fact Agent Barton, we may be here for a while. You need to sit down before you fall down and let me focus on helping your partner."

Time passed slowly, images and sounds reaching through his consciousness as if surfacing through water. Everything seemed distant, everything but Natasha herself; her features remained in sharp focus, every spot of blood that freckled her face, every flicker of her eyelids as the anaesthetist put her under.

"Okay get me suction here so that I can see what I'm dealing with," Carter instructed, lifting glove covered hands that were already stained with blood. "We're going to need eight units of O neg on standby and get the camera overhead so I can get a magnified image of this bleeder."

Through the pain, Barton watched it all. He saw the fierce concentration of the surgeon who worked on his partner and her absolute determination to save Natasha's life. With the life of the woman he loved in her hands, Carter took nothing for granted, her hands becoming the tools that would potentially make the difference between life and death. She felt the weight of that responsibility, he could see it in the set of her shoulders and the expression on her face but she remained completely calm.

The wound was deep and there was a lot of internal bleeding. "Oh my God," one of the medics around the bed breathed. He couldn't see the wound but he could see the screen above the bed and the damage that the knife had done as it cut into her side. It was a good thing that Brady was dead because the sight of that wound tract had him wishing that he could kill the guy all over again, slowly and creatively.

"I don't care what it looks like," Carter told them with steely determination in her eyes, "I can fix it providing that I can get a clear view of what's going on in here."

Between Carter's requests for further suction and instructions to fix clamps around the blood vessels in Natasha's side, he kept his gaze on the parts of Natasha's face that he could see above the mask that was fixed over her face. Pale, she was so pale, her hair contrasting sharply with her skin and the white covering of the operating table. He tried to avoid looking at the piles of bloodstained gauze that were mounting up on on the floor around the bed. The sound of the heart monitor became a lifeline, an auditory reminder that she was still there, hanging in.

There was a hissing sound as more blood was cleaned away from the wound. "Got it!" the doctor proclaimed. "Suture."

Someone placed the required equipment in her hands and she went to work closing up the tear in Natasha's abdominal wall, occasionally calling for more gauze as she worked. Before his eyes she knit together flesh and muscle, gradually repairing the damage, that was the moment that he truly began to appreciate what an artist the doctor really was. When all that was left to do was close the wound, he began to breathe again. It was too soon for relief though, as he soon found out.

"BP is falling," someone announced. Clint registered the alarms that sounded around the bed as the words were spoken and felt his blood turn to ice in his veins. This couldn't be where it ended, not after all that they had been through together.

Carter reacted quickly, calling out the protocol for heart failure and moving to play her part. When the crisis had been averted they resumed work on fixing the wound. More blood was requested to replace what had been lost.

Minutes later the alarms sounded again, notifying everyone in the room that Natasha's heart was faltering. That sound, it would haunt his dreams for weeks to come, years if she didn't make it. While the heart in his own chest stuttered along with her own, he clenched his hands into fists and fought against the urge to limp to her side. He hated the thought of her leaving without knowing that he was there.

"Don't you dare," Carter exclaimed looking down into Natasha's face, "you up and die on me and I will be seriously pissed Agent Romanoff!" She yelled instructions that he didn't hear and the medics followed them without question, a well oiled machine whose function was the saving of lives. She was in front of him before he registered her step away from the bed. "With me," she told him, "now."

"What the hell are you doing?" asked the doctor who had got in Clint's face earlier. Over his surgical mask his incredulous expression was clearly visible as Carter helped him up and hauled him to the bedside, pulling his chair behind her with one foot. "She's v-fibbing!"

"And there is nothing on this earth that she is more likely to pull through for than her partner," Carter replied rationally. She turned to Clint, eyes filled with impossible understanding. "I can fix her internally but I can't make her fight - you can."

With a nod, he sat right by Nat's side, positioned where Carter had put him. Reaching for her hand he clasped it in both of his own, remembering all the times that they had reached for one another without thinking during her recovery. It felt like yesterday; it felt like a lifetime ago. He leaned in and rested his forehead against her fingers, praying that she would draw strength from him and pull through. He allowed what was going on around them, the monitors, the voices, that alarm, to fade away and focussed entirely on her. "Don't leave me Nat," he told her quietly, hardly recognising his voice through the numb desperation that saturated the words, "not now. Just stay with me, just stay."

Logically he knew that death was a biological function, part of the bigger process of living and that at some point it came for them all. After all that Natasha had been through it was possible that she just wouldn't have the strength to keep fighting, between the days in that bunker, exhaustion, emotional trauma and heavy blood loss it might not matter how strong her will to live was. Sometimes the will to live was stronger than the body it was housed in. He also knew deep down in his heart that it wasn't her time to go, he and the Black Widow still had miles to travel together. The certainty was bone deep, absolute and that was why he refused to give her up without a fight.

"She's stabilising," Carter's voice announced. Clint raised his head and found her brown eyes looking down at him, eyes bright with confidence. This was her battleground he realised, while the they went out into the field Carter remained in the infirmary, a warrior in her own right with death and disease as her enemy. If he had respected her before, he appreciated her skill and her insight now. "Now that we've got Natasha stabilised, I'd like to prep you for treatment on that leg."

Once they had stabilised her pulse, they moved Natasha from the operating table to a recovery bed in the next room. Clint followed, leaving behind the table covered in bloody gauze and the evidence that someone he loved had almost died. Though he argued, Carter insisted on looking at the wound to his thigh. Being alongside his partner made it bearable, being able to turn his head and look at her while the doctor knelt at his side and examined him was all that allowed him to submit to Carter's attentions. "It's nothing," he told her as she cut away his trousers and pulled off his boot, "just an old wound from a few days ago that took a hit in the fight, I'll be fine in a day or so."

"I'm still checking it out Agent," she told him firmly. He knew that he was being unreasonable, the pain in his leg and the fact that the wound was still bleeding told him that he needed medical attention more than he wanted to admit. Carter examined the wound then glanced up at him, brow furrowed in concentration. "This is more than a hit to the leg, what were you stabbed with?"

"Not sure," he replied, "screwdriver maybe."

"I'm surprised that you were able to walk in here under your own steam Agent Barton," she told him. "It looks very much like the tip of the weapon is still embedded in the muscle. I'm afraid I'll have to put you out so that I can remove it."

Clint felt his pulse pick up, heart rate spiking, he was unwilling to let Natasha out of his sight for even a moment. "Can't you do it under a local?" he asked hopefully.

Carter looked dubious but she didn't outright dismiss the idea even though the other doctor in the room looked ready to interject. Under the weight of that gaze he got the distinct impression that she knew exactly why he didn't want to be anaesthetised. Everything that the surgeon had done since he had arrived at Natasha's side had spoken of knowledge that he wasn't sure he was comfortable with anyone having.

After what seemed like a lifetime she turned and glanced at the other medics in the room, her mind clearly made up. On Carter's orders another bed was wheeled into the room and arranged parallel to the one in which his partner still slept. After watching her make up the bed with surgical sheeting, Clint complied as she assisted him up onto the mattress and eased him back against the low pillow. "I'm going to try and do this here and I'll be using Lidocaine so that I don't have to put you out but if there are any complications we will have to go to plan b, do you understand Agent Barton?"

Clint nodded, ridiculously grateful for the understanding that the doctor had shown, particularly in putting him within touching distance of where he wanted to be most. He allowed the two nurses to strip him down to his boxers and attach various monitors to his body, anything to keep the doctor happy, while he watched the redhead sleeping in the next bed. After a few moments, he heard Carter order everyone but the nurse at her side out of the room, insisting that the procedure was routine and she could handle it alone. The other staff were instructed to retire to the break room but stay close by in case they were needed.

"Thought we could use the privacy," she told him with a smile. "They're good medics but there is a lot of interest in the two of you and the less people know the better."

He was beyond exhausted as they prepped his leg for surgery, barely felt the prick of the needle penetrating his skin as they medicated him. His eyes were already heavy as he felt Carter moving his leg around so that she could get a better view at what she was dealing with. Voices barely registered.

"He's fading doctor," he heard the nurse say, "can't keep his eyes open."

Carter's voice came as if from a great distance, "he won't sleep unless he know's that she's okay. You know what to do."

Half conscious he registered the nurse moving between himself and Natasha and then became aware of his hand being moved until it grasped another. Fighting the black hole of his exhaustion, he forced his eyes open to find that his hand was holding Natasha's, his fingertips resting against her wrist. Reassured by the beating of her pulse against his fingertips, he surrendered to the blackness and placed his trust in Carter to see them both safely through to the other side.