Please note that this chapter contains self-harm and alcohol abuse.

When she awoke, Natasha knew exactly where she was.

Hospital. Probably the one in the tower, since they did their best to avoid public hospitals—too many liabilities. The standard hospital sounds—gentle beeps, mostly—surrounded her, and before she opened her eyes, she knew she was not alone.

She could hear one other person breathing. She stayed still, keeping her own breathing even, and listened.

The other person's breathing was also slow, even. Asleep, then, probably. Natasha turned her head towards the sound and cracked her eyes open.

Steve was asleep in a wheelchair next to her bed. He looked terrible; exhausted, one arm in a probably-unnecessary sling. One-handed, as the other one was splinted, Natasha pulled herself up so that she was sitting, unwilling to disturb Steve's rest by activating the hospital bed. From her new perspective, she could see that one of his legs was wrapped in a cast—also probably unnecessary, given his healing abilities, but the doctors here didn't take risks with their health and often strong-armed them into recovery.

An especially impressive feat, given how treatment resistant all the Avengers were.

Natasha glanced over at the IV stand next to the bed. It looked like she was just getting saline at the moment. That was good. The clock on the heart rate monitor told her it was just after 3 AM. That was also good. There weren't many people around at 3 AM.

Slowly, she pulled the IV needle out of the back of her hand, using the bedsheets to stem the bleeding. Her plan was to sneak up to her rooms and crash there, alone, preferably with a locked door and a bottle of vodka between her and the rest of the world.

Before she could make her grand escape, though, the doors to her room slid open silently and a doctor entered. Her name was Kathy Ericson, and she'd been working in both the hospital and in the biomedical sciences department at least since Natasha had been living at the tower. She'd patched Natasha up before, multiple times now, and Natasha had always appreciated her efficiency.

"Ms. Romanoff, I'm glad you're back with us," she said softly, glancing at Steve. "Captain Rogers has been here most of the night. Thor and Mr. Stark have stopped by several times as well."

Suppressing a flinch, Natasha ignored the name that was missing, the name that would be missing forever, and tried to force her lips into a smile. It ended up being more of a grimace. "What's..." she paused and cleared her throat, which was bone dry. "What's the damage?" she said, keeping her voice down, too.

"Sprained wrist," Dr. Ericson said. "Should take a few weeks to heal, try to avoid any strenuous activity." She grabbed Natasha's chart off the foot of the bed. "You were unconscious when you arrived, but there's no head trauma. We ran a full battery of tests and my best bet is low blood sugar combined with exhaustion and..." and here she paused.

"And...?" Natasha prompted her.

"Panic attack," Dr. Ericson said. "Bad one. We got your blood sugar back up and you've been resting for a few hours." She paused again. "I heard about what happened on your mission. I'm so sorry for your loss."

And that...was not something Natasha was ready to hear yet. Or ever, maybe, but certainly not now, no matter how evenly and practiced Ericson could make it come out.

Despite how gently Ericson had spoken, the words still stabbed Natasha like a knife. Clint was dead, it was because of her. She'd been reckless and careless, and now and there was nothing anyone could do to change it. He was gone. And she was going to have to live with it, and his family was going to have to live with it, and for what?

For a failed mission.

She stood, wrestling herself from the bed, then looked down at her thin paper gown, giving it a dissatisfied tug. "I need my clothes." Her words came out evenly, surprisingly so given the twisted, stuttering state of her mind. She sounded almost rational.

Almost, except for how she didn't bother to keep her voice down.

"Ms. Romanoff, you should stay for a few more hours to make sure you're stable," Dr. Ericson said. "Fainting like you did is not something to be taken lightly."

"I need my clothes, or I swear to god, I'm going to walk out of here naked."

She was yelling, now. But she didn't care. All Natasha cared about was getting out of here, getting somewhere small and safe, finding a place where she could hide for the next ten or twenty years. A place where she could pretend that she hadn't just destroyed the only family she was ever going to have. How could Laura ever look at her again? The kids? For god's sake, one of them was practically named after her, it would be a constant reminder of their father's killer.

Natasha's chest felt tight.

"Hey, calm down, okay? I can go get you something to wear," Steve said, yawning and standing, startling Natasha, who took a deep breath and whipped around to face him.

Dr. Ericson sighed. "Captain, I told you that I don't care how fast you heal, I didn't want you on that leg for at least a week."

Steve shrugged at her. "Sorry." He put his good hand on Natasha shoulder. "It's going to be—"

"Don't you dare say 'okay,'" she hissed, flinching back and nearly knocking the heart rate monitor over.

Steve removed his hand. "I'm sorry. Look. I'll go grab you something to wear, and you let the doctor check you over, okay?"

This was not ideal, but it seemed like the only way she was going to get out of here. Natasha nodded, stiffly, and Steve walked out of the room.

Dr. Ericson sighed, obviously displeased by his blithe disregard of her medical advice. Then she grabbed a penlight out of her pocket. "Follow the light, please, Ms. Romanoff."

That was easy.

Quelling the nausea rolling in her stomach though? That took effort.

Steve was back within half an hour, and Natasha, even as terrible as she felt, had to smirk at what he'd brought her to wear.

"Well, I couldn't get into your rooms," he said, handing her one of his t-shirts. It said, 'I'd flex, but I like this shirt.' "So I just grabbed some of my stuff. Sam gave it to me," he added, nodding at the shirt.

"You've been upgraded from 'dweeb' to 'dork'," Natasha said, trying for her usual wry tone. It came out flat, instead, and Steve wordlessly handed her a pair of sweatpants to go with the shirt.

After he'd respectfully turned his back so she could change, Natasha ditched the hospital gown for Steve's extremely roomy clothing. She reflected that she was glad she only had to wear these for a few minutes, as it was almost necessary to hold the pants up with one hand.

Once she'd changed, she wordlessly turned and walked out of the room.

Steve caught up to her exactly two steps later. "Natasha."

She ignored him. He was the team leader, and she didn't want to think about the team right now, because then she'd have to think about the gaping void in the team, which would lead to the gaping void in her life.

It was easier to ignore him. Then he was just a friend. An annoying one.

"Natasha," he said again, this time grabbing her elbow.

Natasha yanked her arm away. "Aren't you injured or something? Shouldn't you go, I don't know, sit down?"

"Not until I'm sure you're all right," Steve said.

Natasha turned to him, raising her eyebrows. "Are you...blackmailing me into talking to you? With my concern for your health? That's underhanded. I like it." The words sounded like her. The tone was still flat, deflated.

Steve gave a small, forced grin. "I could pretend to limp, if that would sell it more." He sighed, clearly finding the banter too much to maintain. "I know how much Barton meant to you, I just want to make sure you're going to be okay."

"I'm going to be fine," Natasha ground out. Lying came second nature to her; she was fairly sure at this point she was never going to be fine again. She started walking again, and Steve kept pace. "Really," she said. "I will. I'm just..."

Not there yet.

"Okay," Steve said, his tone plainly saying 'I don't believe you.' "What can I do for you? Aside from leaving you alone."

Natasha stopped in front of the elevator that would take her to her floor and pressed the 'up' button. "I really need space right now." She was beginning to feel like she was going to scream, or cry, or maybe both, and she wanted to be alone long before any of that happened. "Clint's not the first partner I've lost," she added, staring straight ahead. "I'll be fine." A truth to temper the lie. He wasn't the first partner she'd lost. She wasn't going to be fine.

He was the first best friend she'd lost. And while his wasn't the first family she'd destroyed, it had been the first one where she hadn't meant to.

"Natasha," Steve said.

When she didn't reply, he sighed. "We haven't told his family yet. We wanted you to be there."

Natasha felt, suddenly, like she might throw up.

"We know how close you are to them," Steve went on, "and—"

The elevator opened in front of them. Natasha stepped on hurriedly, pressing the button for her floor, hoping Steve would take the hint and leave her alone.

He didn't, instead following her onto the elevator. "And we thought it would be better, coming from you."

"Better?" Natasha snapped. "You think anything is going to make it okay?"

"Not okay," Steve amended. "Just less...horrible."

Natasha was shaking her head, though. "Nothing's going to make it better, less horrible, whatever you want to call it. Their father is dead, Steve, because of a mission that didn't even accomplish anything. Laura's husband is dead because I decided to keep going up that mountain, because I underestimated what we were getting into, because I—"

"Hey," Steve interrupted her. "It's not your fault—"

She turned to him. "Yeah. It is. And I'm not going to look at them and say, oh, sorry I killed your dad, kids, but it was for the greater good. I can't." She shrugged. "Maybe that makes me a horrible person, but at this point, can you really be surprised by that?" The elevator doors opened, not a second too soon, and Natasha stepped out. "Thanks for the clothes. I'll make sure they get back to you." When Steve made a move as if to follow her, she added, "That was me ending this conversation."

Steve frowned, but when Natasha turned and walked down the hall, he didn't try to follow.

It was something for which she was immensely grateful; her apartment door was barely shut and locked behind her before she had sunk down against it and begun to cry.

At some point, she made it to her couch. Because that was where she was woken up at 10:30 AM by someone knocking on her door.

Natasha sat up and looked at the door. Her brain, slow and foggy, connected 'knocking sound' with 'someone wants in.'

She decided she wasn't interested in seeing anyone and laid back down. Her throat hurt and her head ached, and she figured she was probably dehydrated.

But moving was too much work.

Whoever was at the door was persistent, because they kept knocking for a solid 10 minutes.

And they came back at 11:30, and 12:30.

At 1:30, Natasha braced for the knocking, having not yet left the couch except to make one shambling trip to the bathroom.

But there was no knocking this time, only badly hushed whispers, and this piqued Natasha's curiosity enough that she stood and slumped over to the door.

"You're sure she's here?" One voice—Tony's—asked.

"Pretty sure," another voice—Steve—answered. "Unless she left through a window or something. I was here all night."

"The windows up here don't open, and there's no other way out," Tony said. Natasha smirked; that's what he thought. But her face immediately fell at Tony's next words. "Did they say anything about the funeral?"

Funeral.

Funeral, because Clint was dead, because her own short sightedness had killed him.

Because he was gone and there was nothing they could do about it.

He was gone, and his family was still here, and she'd ripped them apart.

Irreparably separated.

'Aunt Nat' indeed.

Natasha thought that if she wasn't so dehydrated, she might have started to cry again. As it was, she just closed her eyes and leaned against the door with a sigh, her stomach twisting in knots and her hands shaking.

"Not yet," Steve said. "Laura was pretty...pretty shocked. I'm flying up there tomorrow to see what I can do to help. Was gonna go today, but that doctor won't clear me for travel."

"Well, you did get shot twice. Wanna knock again?"

A sigh. "Yeah."

Even with the warning, Natasha still jumped when the pounding started. Then she looked at the door. Placed her hand on the lock.

And...nothing. Despite her intentions, she didn't open the door, didn't turn the lock and twist the knob. She just stood, and waited.

For what?

It sounded like Steve had taken care of informing Clint's family. It made her stomach drop, the fact that she hadn't been there, hadn't been there to look at them when he told them what she'd done. But navigating the world outside her apartment, a world where Clint had ceased to exist, seemed insurmountable. Even now, even as she knew she should, she couldn't seem to open the door. Couldn't seem to negotiate the barrier between her and the rest of the world.

Here, she was safe. Here, she was alone with her pain, isolated, where she belonged.

Here, she could let it eat at her, consume her from the inside out.

And instead of opening the door, she stepped away. Stepped away from the whispers and the pounding.

She turned and walked into the kitchen, silent in her socks, drifting through her apartment.

She opened a cupboard and pulled out a bottle, her focus suddenly singular and crystal clear. She was done grieving. Grief was for the innocent. Grief was for people who hadn't killed their best friend. She was not allowed to grieve, Natasha decided. She could not grieve. No grief, no healing.

She could only forget. She had no right to Clint's memory, not when she had killed him. She had no right to any part of him.

She went back to the couch.

When the knocking came back at 2:30, she was tipsy.

At 3:30, she was drunk. In between shots of vodka, she had ripped all the few pictures she had of Clint off the walls and had put them down the garbage disposal, of all places; it had made sense at the time. She'd taken all the gifts he'd given her and put them in a pile in the middle of the floor. She'd intended to set them on fire, but didn't have anything in the way of fuel.

So instead she sat on the floor, legs crossed, staring at them, thinking of what to do with them instead. His gifts had always something small, sometimes something useful, sometimes useless tchotchkes. Souvenirs from missions. References to their years of inside jokes. A shot glass from Budapest.

That one, at least, was an easy fix. Natasha wobbled to the kitchen, filled it with vodka, knocked the shot back, and then threw the glass against the granite countertop in her kitchen. When she roughly wiped the shards into the sink, they cut her hand, a half dozen nicks that dripped blood on the carpet as she stumbled back to the living room.

By the knocking at 4:30, she was wasted, lying on the floor of her apartment, watching the ceiling spin above her. The cuts on her hand had scabbed over, and she lazily picked at them, reopening the wounds. The pain was dulled by the vodka, but Natasha persisted, digging her fingers into the wounds until they bled freely. It made sense, the pain in her hand mixing with the pain in her chest, and she felt that this was okay, and this was right, even if nothing else was.

Her few moments of reprieve were broken at 5:30.

"Natasha, I can hear you throwing up. Are you okay?"

Natasha wanted very much in that moment to say something witty and clever, the sort of one-liner that everyone expected from her, but lying on her living room floor in a puddle of blood and vomit, it wasn't her shining moment. She elected to continue ignoring Steve. What business did he have, harassing her like this when all she wanted a few hours of peace and quiet to self-flagellate?

But no, he was the 'team leader' and he was going to lead.

Natasha didn't want to be on a team, though, not now, not while she was wounded and hurting. Right now, she wanted to back into a corner and fight anything that came too close.

Steve was getting too close.

There were several seconds of sweet, blessed silence, until:

"If you don't open this door, I'm going to kick it down."

Steve was definitely too close.

Natasha lifted her head. "Fuck off," she snarled towards the door. Then, she settled back onto the ground. The ground was hard and uncomfortable, but at this point in her existence, she didn't figure she deserved anything better.

Several more minutes passed, several silent minutes, sweet, sweet, silence, until, with no warning at all, her apartment door burst open with a bang.

Steve. That asshole. He'd really kicked the door down. "That was unnecessary," Natasha said, her words slurred and mostly muffled by the way her face was pressed into the carpet.

"I told you I was going to do it," Steve said, self-righteous just by virtue of not being passed out drunk on the floor. "Jesus, Nat. Are you okay?"

Natasha felt that the answer was fairly self-evident, so she didn't answer.

The silence stretched on for almost half a minute, and Natasha was almost asleep when she felt Steve grab her by her ankle. He then proceeded to drag her away from the puddle of puke on the carpet.

She kicked her leg, but she was still half-drunk and he had a good grip. Instead, then, she made a sort-of high pitched whining sound, attempting to convey 'you're a jerk' and 'stop doing that' and 'fuck off' all at once.

"You're welcome," Steve said, depositing Natasha on the cold bathroom tile. "Nat, what happened to your hand?"

Natasha wasn't sure where to start with that, so she elected to say nothing. Instead, she shrugged. At least, as much as she could, lying on the floor.

Steve sighed. "Okay. Do you have carpet cleaner?" When she didn't answer, he prompted her, "Nat?"

"Under the kitchen sink," Natasha growled, using her arms as a pillow and clenching her eyes shut against the bright lights in the bathroom. This whole situation was ridiculous.

"Okay," Steve said. "I'm going to make coffee and clean up. Take a shower, you need it, then we're going to talk." He paused. "Nat, you need to talk to someone."

And before Natasha could protest, he was gone, shutting the bathroom door behind him.

Asshole, she thought, glaring at the back of the door. She didn't need to talk to anyone. She needed to be alone, she needed to be quarantined, she needed to do the decent thing and forget.

Why didn't people get that?

Slowly, Natasha sat up, using her good arm to prop herself up. Then she stood to look in the mirror, surveying the damage.

She was still wearing the clothes Steve had brought her in the hospital, but now there was puke down the front of his shirt and blood smeared on the side. Her hair was sticking up, and there was puke in that, too. The smell was noxious.

Did she need a shower? Yes. Was it Steve's job to come in and babysit her? Absolutely not.

And she sure as hell didn't want to talk. Not about this, not about what had happened, not about anything. This was her burden to bear, her pain. She deserved it.

The wounded animal inside of her reared its head, and Natasha knew then that she had to get out of here.

Methodically, Natasha stripped, took the splint off her wrist, and turned on the shower as cold as she could stand it. Cold water wouldn't get her sober any faster, but it would make her more alert. And if she wanted to escape, she needed some modicum of her wits about her. The soap and water stung in the cuts on her hand, and that helped her focus, too.

Once she was clean and back in her bedroom, she made sure Steve was busy in the kitchen, and then she shut the door so she could have some privacy. She got dressed quickly, splinted her wrist, and then gathered a few essential items—her cell phone, wallet, and knife. She put on a pair of sturdy boots and then, with one last look at her closed bedroom door, she stood on her bed and silently popped open the air vent in the ceiling of her room.

Clint, who had loved secret passages and who'd mapped out the whole ventilation system in the tower, had showed her this, had showed her how to get from her room to the parking garage. The memory of them wriggling down the ductwork, giggling at the absurdity the whole time, stabbed her in the chest.

Well. Her pain, her penance. She needed to get somewhere she could be alone with it, somewhere she could quietly rot away until she looked the monster she was.

Somewhere no one would force her to talk, where no one would tell her 'it's okay' and 'it's not your fault.'

It would not be okay, and it was her fault. The lies were nothing more than that, false comfort for someone who deserved nothing of the sort.

Wincing at the pain in her sprained wrist as she pulled herself up, Natasha shimmied into the duct and carefully closed the vent behind her.

She didn't have any definite plans, didn't even know if she'd ever see the tower or the rest of the team again...but she didn't look back once as she sped out of the parking garage and onto the New York City street.