Chapter 8

What I Can't Lose...


The piercing realization of being compromised seized Natasha's guarded heart. She couldn't turn away and search for an escape in the shadows—not this time. She felt ripples of detectable emotions surging in her heated veins; a constant eruption of uncertainty. She couldn't understand why she froze in that moment when he needed her most to push him out of the line of fire. Instead, she trusted their righteous team leader, Captain America—Fury's super weapon. He was the front line of defense against HYDRA, doing the grunt work in recon missions while Fury's agents hacked into ghost files through data-mining. Steve was as a distraction—a deceived pawn—to clear a path for SHIELD without getting their hands dirty.

A part of her respected the Captain's hellbent resilience as an admirable quality in the field. He was obedient to the four virtues and ethical morals; Steve was pure and untainted by the horrors that crossed the weaves of her programmed mind. Some would say he was an angel who had been dragged into an icy hell of betrayal, depravity and lust for power. In other words, his valiant heart didn't belong in her world entrenched by darkness and blood. He wasn't immune to merciless punishment, or the feeling of guilty scars buried deep into his skin. He was a super-soldier, an efficient tactician and a highly skilled fighter who has mastered his craft and moral discipline. But like all good men, America's patron defender had a weakness: idealism and compassion in a world that had lost touch with the values he exhibited.

He wasn't prepared to play the game. Instead of letting the hostages fend for themselves, he barreled into the warehouse and became a shield for people who didn't deserve to live while Clint took the hit.

She didn't expect pain to claim her partner. Not Clint—her best friend—her family.

Conflicted by the torrents of remorse, Natasha was haunted by the real promise she had made to Laura Barton that she would never allow anything happen to Clint under her watch. She stared at the window; zoning in on intense flickers of lightning as each strike of energy pierced through the encroaching mass of ominous clouds; they held reflections of twilight colors of muted pink and russet from the fading sunset. Another unpredictable, raving storm was approaching.

She could sense the winds of change; hot and cold intermixed into the calm air. It was a silent caution not to chase after the storm. The tantalizing moments of waiting to be summoned to Clint's side were crushed against her; making her feel unsteady on her combat boots—searching for answers. She needed to know that Clint was safe and that he would be able to return back to his farm. She owed the archer a debt—a life for a life. Sinking back into the darkness and recalling her icy resolve, Natasha leaned her lithe and tensed body against the close door. She tilted her head back and allowed her mussed scarlet locks to drape her pale features in disarray as she recollected herself.

Finally, the lethal assassin summoned her reserves of strength, poised on her feet, and she strode silently passed the whitewash walls; eluding the patient waiting lounge like a displaced specter. The whole area reeked of lemon fresh disinfectant and wavered a pungent stench of life and death at her nostrils. The corridor was blanketed with doubt, failure and pain; in all the spaces between her and the hallway—leading to the door of Clint's recovery room.

Natasha paused in mid-stride, her stomach clenched and her teal eyes darkened. She drew up a frustrated breath and casually entered the room with the utmost of assurance that Clint was a survivor—hardcore and stubborn. Natasha gripped onto her unyielding defiance, inching closer to the elevated bed. He was reclined comfortably and he seemed to have a tangled mess of wires and plastic tubes sprouting from his limbs, attached to EKG machines and IV drip bags inches from his bedside. His finger was pegged to track eruptions in his pulse and he had been stripped down until his chiseled chest was bare. Natasha's eyes fell onto her partner. She could feel shock and anger surging in her veins.

"Hey, you look rough Clint," she scoffed, bringing herself closer to his side; fire melding with ice as she stroked her fingers along the medical tape fastened against the IV tube in his vein. "...the nurses did a poor job with your bandages..."

She mentally assess his visible wounds. His chiseled torso was littered with purple tinged bruises, a strip of white gauze was wrapped over his right arm, and under his nose was remnants of dried blood. The report that she had managed to swipe revealed that he had a minor fracture in his shoulder, lost an exceeding amount of blood and he was suffering three cracked ribs. Nonetheless, the stealthy Avenger was breathing contently even though he looked battered and utterly disheveled. It was widely debatable if he would endure another attack of pain.

"Well, at least you're stable enough to return back to your safe house in a few days..." She slanted her lips into a coy smirk, leveling her eyes filled with wetness onto his ashen face. She brought her hand to his bare shoulder and squeezed the firm muscle reassuringly, despite that her heart felt gutted out. They both had to heal. She'd promise his wife that he would come back home—safe and strong enough to lift his little girl in his arms. "You did good out there...I should've have been more—"

"Tasha," Clint returned evenly, his voice strained from exhaustion. He fluttered his eyelids open as the sunlight laved across his lax features and pierced into his gray irises. He inclined his head off the pillow; unsealed his chapped lips and tried his utmost to force up words as the heaviness of the morphine clogged in his throat. Once his vision adjusted to the dim light, he settled his bleary stare at her. "I didn't know that you cared..." he lightly teased, beaming at Natasha like he was on a whiskey high. 'At least he isn't in pain,' she thought with measure of relief.

Still, Natasha refused to openly respond to his snarky wakefulness. She was too absorbed in her guilt.

"Hey, don't blame yourself for anything...I only have my arrows...It was inevitable for this to happen. I'm luckily it's just a fracture and not like the injury Trickshot gave me as a kid," he managed to pull his lips into a smile, emitting a raspy chuckle before looking into her dismal eyes. He could vaguely sense that Natasha was about to disarm herself—allowing the cunning, ruthless and utterly unbreakable nature of the Black Widow—the powerful fighting machine of the KGB—to shatter because he was stuck in a hospital bed. Softly, he secured his fingers over her leather sleeve and watched her swallow back tears. "Don't do this to yourself, Nat...My life isn't your responsibility."

Natasha backed away from the bed, her posture tensed as he folded her arms over her chest, intently looking down at the gauze swathed over his wound. Her expression vacant, "I owe you, remember?" she reminded him, coldness searing in her lungs. Clint looked at her with tender leaky eye, that still twinkled over the gloss of pain when he centered his gaze on her. "Don't look at me like that, Clint," she dismissed, bitterness resided in her heart as she tried to ease down the feverish venom gushing in her veins. She quickly tore her eyes away and stared at the lightning dancing across the sky.

She seemed distant and utterly disturbed by the predictable situation. Regardless, the pledge they made back when she had no soul haunted her, just like the raging urge to kill. He saved her from the dark end of her fate, gave her a chance to redeem her sins, to have a purpose and feel human again. "Your life is my debt, we're not on equal terms until I save you, and I will next time."

Clint listened to the bitter snarl emitting from her sour lips. His eyelids dropped and he stared at her as the haze of exhaustion pulled him back. He was disconnecting from the world, trying to open his eyes and steadily focus on her but he didn't have the energy to stay awake. Soft breaths ghosted from his twitching lips, and the pain dissolved as his pulse evened with his normal heart rate. But he detected the storm clashing inside her, the cold fury of the Black Widow aching to become released and unleash her lethal bite on the man who didn't have her partner's back. "Nat, don't blame Steve. He did what was right for the mission," he breathed, struggling to get into a comfortable position. Gritting his teeth, he managed to stare into her intense and obscured eyes. "I would have done the same."

"Steve is not ready to face the dark places of this world like we do. He has a shield and we have guns." Natasha stiffened her jaw into a tight clench of disapproval. "He follows his heart too often instead of his head, and that is a weakness our enemies will use to bring him down." She reached out a hand to grab a cup of apple juice at the table and broke the seal off; handing the drink to him. "We don't save our enemies..." She feigned harshly, grabbing another juice and watched him take a few sips while cold resentment was evident in her gaze. "We usually let them burn."

"Cap's a good man, Nat," Clint returned with an evened breath, his lips curved into a wry grin. "I'm glad we have super-soldier on our team. Whether you like it or not, Steve's our big gun and he does things that we can't. So before you accuse him of being a liability, take a good look at him and then you'll see the truth."

"Careful, Barton," Natasha shot back in a husky warning with her infuriated glare set onto him. Instinctively, her poised fingers traced over the hostler belt strapped along the jutting curve of her hip. She felt the tightness of a rueful smirk tug against her lips.

A fleeting taunt of playfulness subsided; Natasha gathered up her confidence and swayed a fraction of an inch closer to the bed where she wanted to take the opportune moment to spill out her confessions. To hold his hand eventually and tell him that she was glad he was recovering from the attack and they were going to have another mission together. She couldn't expose those emotions even though the prompting inched under her skin. What came out was the indignant tone of the guarded Soviet operative. "Remember that I'm armed and very dangerous."

"Nat, give Steve a chance before you do something irrational and he becomes my new bunk mate." He chuckled, hollowly, taking another sip of juice. She gave him a penetrating look, her fingers coldly tapped against the cold steel of the pistol. Unfazed by the reproach of her daunting semblance; Clint settled the cup on the table and sunk his back into the pillow. His spiked brown hair flattened as he began to drift. She was mere inches away from him, fuming and struggling to keep her stern composure. "I'm due for a long vacation from field work," he mumbled, heaving out a breath and forcing his eyes open just enough for her to see rims of icy grey. "Tell Fury I'm going off the radar for a few weeks and spending time at the farm. Laura has a list of things that I need to finish...I promised Copper that I would teach him how to drive the old rust bucket of a tractor."

Natasha shook her head as she let him take her hand voluntarily. The corner of her mouth turned up into an impish smirk as she rubbed her hand over his rough knuckles. "I think Fury already knows, since he had Stark pay for your medical expenses. You're clear to leave when the doctors says so..."

He sighed, meeting her darkened stare. "What about you, Tasha? Will you be able to handle everything without my eyes watching your back?"

"Oh, I think I can handle it, Clint," she whispered, confidence blossomed over her pale features. The harrowing sense of compromise resurfaced and she drained the cup of juice, throwing it into the trash can. She bent slightly down and pressed her lips onto his forehead, letting them linger there, feeling his clammy skin heat up in the wake of contact with her soft kiss. His eyes closed and a smug grin fastened on his lips. He was secured from danger and she felt assured that he would be standing at her side within a week—they were partners until the end of line. "Rest up at home base, keep Laura and the kids safe and I will see you soon, Agent Barton."

As Clint dozed off into his morphine daze, Natasha involuntarily twisted around on her heeled boots and moved to the doorway in fervent steps until she was obstructed by a towering shadow.

Steve stood stoically in the doorway, restricted and observant. He wore a plain blue jacket and frayed jeans that were fading with color. His displaced chiseled features were shrouded by the brim of his vintage Brooklyn Dodger's baseball cap. His crystallized azure eyes were heavy from lack of sleep. He was troubled, silent and hesitant.

Natasha momentary absorbed his entire appearance: he looked almost hardened by his faults; his ruffled blond hair poked along the ridges of the cap. The broad clench of his squared jaw was blemished with smudges of ash and there were flecks of glass lingering on the sagged width of his shoulders. Despite wanting to dig a knife right into his shoulder to make him feel the pain that Clint was enduring because of his heroic choices, Natasha held onto her restraint. It's was sickening.

"What are you doing here, Rogers?" she asked with acid bite in her harsh tone. "Haven't you done enough damage in one day."

"Natasha, I didn't mean for this to happen," Steve returned in a faint whisper, his eyes were unabashedly narrowed. He kept his distance and leaned his shoulder into the door frame. He pressed his lips into a flat line, avoiding her scolding glare. "I was my job to rescue hostages no matter which side they were on."

"Just admit it that you messed up on this mission, Rogers" she intoned, holding her stare firm. "It's because of your compassion towards the scum of humanity my partner is stuck with a fractured shoulder. It was a simple recon mission, not a rescue; Clint and I always get the job done without leaving a blood trail. You changed that directive and put your team at risk because you felt the need to save three thugs who didn't give a damn about our lives." She bit down on her lip, hard enough to collect the raw taste of blood. There was dissension rattling through her bones and she stormed out into the hallway.

"Natasha—"

Hearing the listless measure of despondence rising in his voice, she abruptly whipped her head around and shot him with an icy glare that speared into his heart. She was barely containing her rage. "I can't lose him...You understand that, Steve. In there is the only piece of resistance I have to the Red Room. I'm trying my upmost to believe in our partnership and to shake everything off. Whenever I do feel something people around me always feel pain...I'm not blaming you for what happened to Clint, I realize that I was the one who made the mistake of putting his life in the hands of Captain America...The man who never leaves a soldier behind." She searched Steve's face as his jaw flexed into a sour grimace.

"You want to know the reason why I went into the warehouse..." His storm blue eyes affixed onto hers. "Inside, there were two more hostages. A mother and a three year old boy." Fire was engulfing inside his chest, he gritted, patronizingly. "Fury didn't tell you everything about the mission, Natasha, because he didn't look deeper into the shadows. In war sometimes every line gets downplayed, but I follow my gut and because I did, two lives were spared."

Natasha stood silently in abashed silence as she digested this unexpected news. A dismal sigh escaped her parted lips. "Well, I guess I owe you an apology, Rogers," she leveled her eyes with his honest blue embers and she closed the distance between them, leaning against the door. "I'm sure once Clint hears the whole story—he'll trust your call."

Steve twisted his lips into a smile, his eyes were burning and searching for her credence. "Do you trust me, Natasha?" he asked softly

"Steve," she breathed out, holding a sly smile. "I don't even trust myself."

"Well, I trust you enough to share a cup coffee..." He offered with a bright smile, gesturing his hand to the direction of the elevator. She accepted with a simple nod. In that moment in disarming herself, Natasha couldn't imagine herself walking away. She needed it.

Natasha smirked, and looked at him, the raging storm had cleared. She was seeing endless sky blue. "You buying, Captain America?"

"Yeah," Steve echoed back, moving tentatively to her side, his large hand almost edging to grasp hers. "I'm buying, Agent Romanoff."

When they casually walked away side by side, Natasha looked back at Clint's room, more meaningful than before. She held her promise and knew that everything would be fine—she believed it.