My apologies for not updating sooner! Classes have started and I already have a bunch of projects and quizzes to worry about. Don't worry though, I love writing and will be updating when I have time ^^ (most likely on weekends)

Thanks for reading my little story! Special thanks to all those who reviewed for the last chapter! You guys are absolutely amazing! I get super happy whenever my email tells me I've got a new one!

Big thanks to all those who supported The Titanic as my drug's name ^^ I'm really happy you guys liked it!


Part Seven

At some point Natasha managed to coax Clint back to the bed, though the warm covers seemed to have lost their comfort. Not that sleeping in a dead psychopath's bed was in any way comforting to begin with.

Natasha was grateful to be left alone with her hawk. Steve and the others meant well and had every right to be with their fallen teammate in his time of need, but Natasha was selfish. If these were her partner's last moments, an idea that Natasha was fighting against with all her heart, she wanted to be alone with him.

Clint didn't sleep. It was something Natasha was grateful for and worried about. The archer lay curled on top of the wrinkled bedspread a constant shiver trembled through his weakened body.

"Wouldn't you be warmer under the covers?" Natasha asked cautiously as she edged closer to his body on the bed. To her horror he flinched away from her.

"It already feels like I'm laying on a bed of nails." Clint rumbled out through clenched teeth.

For him to admit pain told Natasha enough – this was serious. The symptoms were rapidly appearing and Natasha's heart constricted when she realized he was fading just as quickly. Right before her eyes her hawk was dying.

"Do you want anything? Water?" Natasha needed to make sure he was as comfortable as he could be. This was all her fault – if only she had pulled him back before the riot.

"Yeah, that would be good." Clint nodded slightly, although the way he was starting to shiver, it could have just been an uncontrolled movement.

Not wanting to leave Clint for long, Natasha ducked into the bathroom and filled a glass that Steve had brought her earlier. When she returned she gently helped Clint up, though he didn't react to strongly against the touch she was pretty sure it hurt him. Damn Conroy and his twisted poison. Damn him straight to the worst part of hell.

Gently she tipped the glass to his pale lips and the liquid slid down his throat. The reaction was immediate, Clint's blue-grey eyes widened in shock as the cry of pain bubbled out with a spray of the cool water. A harsh cough took over Clint's shaky frame and for a minute Natasha was terrified that this was the end.

Disregarding the fact that it might harm him, Natasha pulled her partner into her arms and rocked him. She needed to be close to him, needed him to know she was still there. "You're okay, you're okay, just breathe." Natasha told him, voice just above a whisper directed into his ear.

A strangled cry sounded again and Clint actually let out a sob. From their positioning Natasha couldn't see his face and suddenly she needed to. Gently she turned him so his sweat soaked forehead was resting against her neck as she moved back and forth.

The coughing subsided finally and for a moment the two of them just breathed.

"I'm okay." Clint offered after a long stretch of silence. His voice was tight with pain, but strong. "The water, it was just too much."

"The water?" Natasha asked, surprised. Her eyes quickly narrowed. "Stupid, I should have guessed something like that would hurt you. Lying down hurts you." Me touching you hurts too, Natasha added silently, but refused to acknowledge it out loud. If she did she would have to let him go.

Natasha wasn't ready to let him go.

"B-Bruce'll find something." Clint tried to comfort her. How stupid was that? Here he was the one in pain and he was worried about her. "It wasn't your fault."

That caught her attention. "What wasn't?" Natasha asked, though she already knew.

"The riot, for one. Me getting stabbed for another." Clint managed a shadow of his typical smirk. "It was my own damned fault. I should have pulled back, but I wanted – wanted to get it done. I – I thought I had time."

"I lost your position." Natasha argued. There was no excuse for that. "You never would have lost my position."

"We'll never know what I would have or wouldn't have done. Riot's are bad news. I should have gotten out sooner." The archer pointed out firmly. "This was not your fault. I wouldn't have listened if you told me to pull back. The hit was destined to go badly from the start."

"Next time we're telling Fury to shove his ideas up his – "

"There won't be a next time." Clint's soft declaration shut the redhead up. "No situation is ever exactly the same." He clarified when she didn't respond. "I'm going to be – be fine, Nat." The small stammer didn't make the Russian feel much better.

Silence swallowed them again, the only sounds in the room where their breathing. Clint's breaths were ragged, close to wheezing.


Things went from bad to worse after that. Clint's skin's sensitivity increased to the point where everything that brushed against his skin burned his nerves. Natasha's skin felt like fire, her gentlest touch felt like knives cutting into his skin. It was pure torture.

He did his best to hold back the agony he was feeling. Clint knew his partner was blaming herself for his condition. He also knew he only had himself and Conroy to blame.

As time ticked by Clint's thirst grew more and more painful, but the idea of taking another drink made him wince. When Natasha had poured the water down his throat the first time it had felt like lava. The agony had lingered, leaving Barton a whimpering mess in her razor sharp arms.

That kind of rerun would do nothing to cure Natasha's guilt filled heart.

Everything turned quiet around them. The rest of the team, and SHIELD from what Barton had heard, were working on a cure for him. Time was running out though, Clint knew that. He could feel himself slipping away.

Things were starting to get fuzzy. Memories of other times when he had been drugged overlapped with the present. Most of those times had been when he'd been in enemy hands. Natasha's calm, soothing voice drew him back to the present.

It hurt. His blood was stained now, wrong. It didn't belong to him anymore. It wasn't his anymore.

"Nat, don't touch it." Clint whispered as his confusion grew.

"What?" Her cool voice entered his dark world of fire.

"My blood, it's in my blood."

There was a pause, something dripped on his face, something as hot as a small flame. Knives ran along his scalp suddenly, unexpected, causing Clint to scream.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Clint." Natasha gasped, the feeling of knives vanished. "It's going to be okay, I won't touch you again." She sounded so scared, he didn't like it, but she had to know. He was tainted.

If they were ever to touch again he would need to be cleansed. The poison was in his blood, it was ruined – he needed to be free of it.

"I want it out, I want it out of me." He said suddenly, wild eyes focused up at Natasha's confused eyes.

"Bruce!" She yelled suddenly, eyes moving towards the door. "Bruce, I need you now!"

His partner sounded desperate, why? Was she afraid of him? She knew, she knew he wasn't right. Tainted blood. He needed it out.

With a thrashing movement Clint fought to get off the bed, nearly knocking Natasha off the mattress in the process. His partner's hands felt like spears as they pushed down on his shoulders, trying to keep him in place.

A scream tore through his throat. The pain was increased from the force of the scream. Blindly Clint did what his instincts told him to do – fight.

The archer threw a punch that hit flesh and rolled from the bed, scrambling to the other side of the room. The bathroom. The door's lock was broken from when Natasha broke the door down earlier, so he had to work fast.

With a fist to the mirror the glass easily shattered. Clint grabbed the largest piece and raised his bruised wrist. He needed to get the blood out of him. It was tarnished, it no longer belonged to him.

"Client, what are – "

"Barton!"

Something hit Clint from the side before he could do any real damage to himself, the shard of glass shattered against the counter into a million tiny pieces.

"Clint, stop!"

It took Clint a moment to realize he was fighting against his friends, his teammates, Natasha. The energy within the archer was suddenly gone. Clint's knees buckled and he sagged to the ground. Natasha and Bruce helped soften the landing, guiding Barton's body down to the cold floor gently.

"Clint?" Natasha asked, sharp fingers on his cheek captured his attention back to her.

"I need it out of me, Nat, I'm tainted." He told her brokenly. "My blood is tainted."


Natasha was speechless as she watched her partner fall apart in front of her. Tears dripped down Clint's face unchecked as he begged for her to rid him of his blood – his life force.

She was still in shock from what she had seen. The sight of him pressing the shard of glass to his wrist, ready to take his own life to free himself from the grip of the poison and the pain, that image would haunt her until the day she died.

His mind was gone, she realized coldly. "He's lost." She whispered to herself.

Bruce knelt next to them, his hands around Clint's wrist as he examined it. "It's not a deep cut, but it's bleeding pretty badly. I'll need to wrap it. I'm afraid it'll send him into shock if I try stitching it in the state he's in." Banner's eyes moved from the damaged wrist to Clint's grayed face. "His nerves are already way to sensitive, all he's feeling is pain."

"Don-don't touch m-my blood." Barton's eyes fell on the doctor's face. "Tainted. It's tainted. I-I'll infect you."

"Clint, you're going to be fine." Bruce promised. "We have a lead, we think Conroy kept the antidotes for each of his poisons in his lab, but it's hidden. We're going to – "

A sudden burst of energy and Clint was fighting again, struggling against them.

"You won't take me alive! I won't tell you anything!" The archer shouted bitterly.

"He – he's not here anymore." Natasha told Bruce, slightly worried about the Hulk making an appearance when her partner struck the timid doctor across his face with a solid right hook. Quickly Natasha restrained her partner's arms, hugging his body to her forcefully.

"He thinks we're someone else," Natasha struggled to keep the archer under restraint. "Someone interrogating him. He's stuck in the past. The pain, he doesn't see us anymore." She felt frantic, the heat rolling off of Clint was too much. The whole situation was going to hell. Everything was so out of control – every solution out of reach.

"Hold him still," Banner told her needlessly. "We have to restrain him until we can find the antidote." Bruce rushed from the room to call Steve for help. Moments later the super soldier appeared and with his help they pulled a struggling Clint from the bathroom back to the bedroom and tied him down to the bed.

"I'm sorry," Natasha whispered to Clint once he was settled, his struggles decreasing as his energy leaked out of him.

With dark anger in his eyes, Clint stared back at Natasha with a cruelness he'd never directed at her before. Hell, she didn't even know he possessed such hatred. "I'll kill you." Clint promised Natasha in a voice that made her believe him. "I'll kill you all!"

"Clint," Natasha sighed out his name, her fingers brushing against his pale cheek only for him to flinch away in pain and disgust.

"I can't help him. I can't do anything but watch." She looked over her shoulder, back at Bruce. Natasha's eyes were lit with the heartbreak she felt. "We can't let this be the end."

"It won't be," Bruce promised with shaky confidence. "I'll bandage his wrist and go back to the lab. We'll find the cure."

"No, wait," Steve interrupted from the other side of the bed. "I have medical field training. I'll wrap his wrist. You'll be of more help down in the lab with Tony. More help than I'd be."

The doctor hesitated for a moment before nodding.

"We'll fix this." Banner told Natasha before vanishing out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

For the first time since this whole fiasco started, Natasha was starting to believe they wouldn't be able to save her hawk.


Well things are definitely not looking good for Clint, huh? Don't worry my friends, this shows not over yet!

I hope you guys are still excited!

Reviews and reviewers are always loved!