[A/N] Quick disclaimer: The effects of PTSD and other symptoms of trauma manifest from situation to situation and person to person. What works here is not a panacea. If someone is undergoing an anxiety attack, a traumatic flashback, or a related phenomenon, ask if it's okay to touch them (or let them know what you're doing if they lose the ability to vocalize).
Thank you :)
Despite how deeply he sleeps, part of him feels impervious to rest, like there's a fire alarm constructed within himself. It's not intrusive, it's just there—a side effect of how much he's conditioned and trained his own physiology—ready to intercept any green flare-ups or nightmares Natasha may have. That's what alerts him on nights like this, when he awakens to find Nat upright, shuddering and slick from a cold sweat.
"Hey," he whispers, pushing himself out of the covers, orienting himself right beside her. He doesn't need the light, nor does he want it, to know what she looks like right now, to know the distance in her eyes. "I'm here. I'm right here with you, Nat."
But she's not here. The terror has her in tangles; it's revoked her voice and the ground beneath her feet. It's flung her from their home into every place and time she doesn't want to be.
Touching her could bring her home or push her further away. That's the fickle beast of trauma. They both know it well. It doesn't make it any less painful or any easier to see her like this—and that's the cruelty of it. He tries to beat it with careful thought. He wards off his own anxiety with an adamant reminder of what she needs, and that's not the both of them freaking out.
It's like he's staring at an integral with a complexity of components when a notion strikes him, vague but sure like distant thunder. He acts on it, shifting to grab something from the bedside table and assuring her, "I'm not going anywhere."
In a matter of moments, he returns with his headphones and cell in hand. When the device awakens, light blasts forth from the screen, the hour 3 AM glares at him and he silences it by dimming the brightness and opening his music app. In the meantime, he fumbles with his headphones, switching them on and waiting for it to find the bluetooth signal to anchor it. Patience is usually one of his strong suits, but that goes out the window when the person he loves is trapped within an internal hellscape. He curses technology for not being instantaneous.
The headphones connect as he queues up his post-transformation playlist. Though a pang cracks his chest apart as he angles himself toward her and her blatant suffering, gentle hope effervesces in his stomach.
He prefaces his intentions before acting upon them. "I'm gonna put some headphones on you—is that okay?"
The dim, digitized luminescence outlines her enough to show the silhouette of her head, how it slightly nods.
He does what he told her he would. Without grazing any unnecessary part of her, he eases the padded muffs over her ears, settles the band on her skull.
Before proceeding, he provides every opportunity for her input, be that denial or encouragement. "I'm gonna play some music. Some, uh—" He refers to the playlist, "Puccini. Okay?"
When no response comes, his thumb hesitates above the screen. He hovers above an aria from an opera he's never seen, suspended in the fear of making some terrible mistake. The horrors within her own mind revoke everything except basic somatic functions. They don't even give her the option to respond. He has to depend on how he knows her.
He presses on the song. The noise and its effects are invisible to him. Seconds creep by across the play bar that tracks the song's progress. He tries not to fixate on that, but her. If there's any sign of discomfort, of any kind of pain, he'll abort this whole endeavor. Whatever it takes to return her peace of mind, he'll do.
At one minute and 57 seconds, her shaking stops. He peeks at the queue of songs to come, on the lookout for nasty surprises even where there will be none. When he clicks back, it's two minutes and seventeen seconds, and Natasha breathes. She seizes control of the inhale, holds onto it for three seconds, then releases. This process repeats until the song ends and flips over to Bellini.
They sit there. She recovers. He refuses to nod off even for a second. He counts the beats of her breaths and tries to be as here for her as possible.
Near the end of this aria, before the Mozart slated next, she reaches for his hand. He stretches that arm around her shoulders and doesn't pull or nudge. She leans into him on her own. Their now becomes her shelter. He welcomes her home with a kiss on the crown of her head. The music plays on.