I know, there are probably a million stories on this theme being written/posted right now, but last night's Agent Carter left me with a bunch of Black Widow feelings and I had to do something about them.
Tiny spoiler warning for a bit of the Agent Carter episode "The Iron Curtain".
Clint always hated it when Natasha didn't answer his calls.
He knew there were plenty of reasonable explanations why she wouldn't or couldn't: she was embedded in a mission, she was taking a shower, she was just very deep in well-earned sleep. Still, any time he couldn't reach her, experience had a little part of his chest clenching with dread that wouldn't relax until he found out why.
Today, it terrified him. He had spoken to her since S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, knew she had survived and dodged authorities thus far, but tonight was his first chance to get home. She had let him know what apartment she had picked as a safehouse—one he had never been to, since their normal list was potentially among the files she had dumped to the Internet. She had to know when he was arriving. Maybe something had happened since his call at the airport before flying out to New York. He tried to assure himself if she had been arrested it would be on the news, but he knew there were far more subtle ways to make a wanted person disappear and every one of them iced his blood.
He entered the apartment cautiously, snapping out his bow and nocking an arrow. The lights were out, dishes from dinner drying in the dishrack, all quiet and normal-looking. But normal could hide many things.
He decided to hazard a call, in case she was on the alert too and might lash out at an intruder first and identify later. "Natasha?"
No answer. He clenched the bow tighter, moving further into the apartment. "Nat, it's me."
A slight moan escaped from the bedroom and adrenaline burned the cold from his veins. He hurried to the doorway, arrow drawn as he swept the room quickly. Seeing nothing, his eyes leapt to the bed and the familiar form shifting restlessly in it.
Clint eased out his bated breath in sync with his bowstring. The effects of a nightmare were regrettably familiar for both of them, but still preferable to an attacker in person. He set the bow down and walked around the bed to crouch by her side.
As he knelt down, he froze. A pair of glinting handcuffs held her left hand to the bedpost. Clint's jaw clenched. It had been years since she resorted to that old habit. Wasn't it?
He first learned about it on a long mission about six months after Natasha joined S.H.I.E.L.D. He had noted her agitation and difficulty getting to sleep before when sharing a room, but assumed it was just the unfamiliarity of her new life. Then, after a particularly bad day that involved a witness killed under their watch, his teenaged face still burned into Clint's mind as he had started to doze off, he had been roused by a strange clicking scrape of metal on metal. Opening an eye and looking over at Natasha's bed, he saw her surreptitiously adjusting something metal on her wrist and tucking it under the pillow. It was another mission, difficult night, and frantic investigation of her distressed yelp when he found her waking from a nightmare, hand cuffed to the bed as it was now. The only reason she had explained the situation was to stop him from his determined hunt for whoever had tried to hurt her.
He almost wished he still didn't know this little quirk of hers. The few things he knew about her upbringing in the Red Room were mostly gleaned from those scars she couldn't hide from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s medics and the fragmented mutters in Russian he'd caught when she was lost in night terrors. The images those conjured were revolting enough, but her story of a barracks filled with young girls, shackled to their beds at night, made his stomach turn in a different way. But what unsettled him anew was her casual admission that the practice continued long after the girls stopped trying to escape or act out their bad dreams. And then long after anyone was overseeing them at all.
Everyone had their coping mechanisms, he knew that. Ways of dealing with the horrors they saw in this line of work. But he still could never quite let go of the fact that instead of some kind of old teddy bear or piece of clothing, Natasha found comfort and familiarity in being handcuffed as she slept.
That was one secret nobody could ever know. She had kept the behavior hidden while being based at S.H.I.E.L.D. or on missions, with Clint only discovering it by accident. It certainly wasn't in the files that got leaked to the public, and Clint intended to keep it that way. There was no reason for anyone else from S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers to find out. Especially Stark. There would be no end of teasing if he found out Natasha kept handcuffs in the bedroom, even though the real reason was far more disturbing than anything even Stark's twisted mind could imagine, and she was mortified enough about this lingering compulsion as it was.
But over the past few years, things had gotten more stable and Natasha had become more comfortable in her life at S.H.I.E.L.D. She had begun opening up to Clint about her fears and frustrations so they didn't need to tear free in the night, and he thought she didn't need the cuffs anymore. When had she reverted to using them? he wondered, guilt joining the worry in his heart. He cursed not being able to get back to the States sooner after the disaster in DC.
Focusing instead on the present, which he could do something about, Clint gently reached out, putting his hand over Natasha's free one. "Nat."
She jumped at his touch, fear and reflexes drawing her free hand back in a fist and jerking her backward. Her eyes cleared with recognition almost instantly, though their relief was replaced by embarrassment as she felt the restraints on her left arm again.
Clint, for his part, didn't even glance at the cuffs, keeping his eyes on hers with concern and a slight one-sided smile. "Hey."
"'Bout time you got back," she grumbled with false irritation, eyes darting anywhere but his.
"Well, I might have been back quicker, but there's some kind of chaos going on over an intelligence leak," he said lightly, taking it as a good sign she was ready to banter this quickly after a bad night. "Kind of slowed things down getting a ride home."
She grunted, eyes darkening just noticeably. "Guess it'd have been easier if you'd still had a home to come back to."
Ah. Understanding flowed ahead of his worried questions and curiosity to hear the whole story of what went down while he was gone. All that could wait. Instead, he pushed to his feet and started for the bathroom, pretending not to see her scramble to pull a key out from under the pillow and release her hand.
"Ah, you know me," he continued as if it were any other night. "Anywhere's home if you give me long enough."
He turned on the sink and grabbed a washcloth to clean up a bit. "So, how long did you book this place for?" he asked, keeping his voice light as he tried to stop picturing Natasha as a kid, chained and starved and conditioned for murder.
"A few more days," her voice came in from the other room, sounding very close to normal again. "I'm still deciding where to go next."
He glanced at the counter as he wiped his face and noticed the unopened bottle of hair dye. He hadn't seen her go brunette in a long time. "Well, we can make plans over breakfast in the morning."
"I'm awake now if you want to get started."
"Are you kidding?" He walked back into the room, drying his hands. He noted that the handcuffs had been stashed away somewhere once more and Natasha was sitting on the edge of the bed as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "I just flew for almost fourteen hours. Can't we get some sleep first? The world will wait until morning."
Years of getting to know her allowed him to see the tiny flicker of relief in her eyes before it retreated behind her normal guarded gaze. Whether it was for the extra rest or him letting the handcuff incident go without comment, he wasn't sure. Either way, he saw her posture uncoil just a bit as she shifted back to allow him to sit on the bed beside her. "There's another bedroom, you know."
"Yeah? But it's all the way over there," he play-whined, flopping down on the mattress beside her. "Scoot over. I can't pull down the blanket."
He could almost hear her roll her eyes, but she didn't protest further as she slipped back onto her side of the bed. Once she had pulled the blanket back up over both of them, he rolled onto his side facing her and she repositioned until she had her back curled against him. That was another secret of hers you wouldn't find in any file. With people she trusted deeply enough, Natasha took to physical contact with an appreciation that spoke to how long she had been deprived of it.
A fresh pang of regret pricked Clint's heart. Wrapping an arm around her waist reassuringly, he glanced over her shoulder to where her arms rested on the mattress before her. Getting his daring up, he reached farther across her and gently wrapped his hand around her left wrist.
Her body tensed against him, barely breathing. But she didn't pull away, so he decided to continue, gently squeezing her wrist, but not restraining her. When her body finally relaxed once more, he hoped that meant she had gotten his message: the understanding, the acceptance, and the silent plea to take the alternative he offered as well as the promise that went with it.
She settled into sleep without protest and he followed soon after. The mess of the world, the uncertain future, and the broken echoes of the past would all wait until morning. Until then, this was enough.