Shoutouts to yornma, Jo, WhispersOfWings, Eva7673, Jewelz1642, alreadytorn, kissmyquiver, Castlealexanderbeckett, MaddieFayeth96, fluttershypegasus1, Chocoholic with a Pen, pengineer, beverlie4055, bellapaige88, Hofherrp, hiddlestonlover213, Guest, awesomeclintasha, ivory-sword, Peryton, Black Widow and Hawkeye OTP, stephanie rickne, Schmalfu, PossibleAvenger, and Oriana8 for reviewing!

Oh, my God. All the reviews. Wow. You guys...wow.

Today's Author's Note is going to be long, so buckle in, kids. I have some housekeeping and questions to address.

In the comics (both classic comics and modern comics), Clint is deafened. In the classics, he's deafened by one of his sonic boom arrows, but in the modern comics (again, I highly recommend), he's deafened by someone stabbing him through the ears with two arrows. So yes, it's not just an author decision; it's canon if you're looking at the comics.

I've gotten a lot of amazing support from you guys on my decision to write Clint going deaf in, but I did have a few resistors, so I wanted to talk a little bit more about why I made the decision to include it. First off, and this will be a plot twist, I'm hard of hearing and wear hearing aids. I grew up hearing, but as I got older, my hearing decided to turn off, so now I'm kind of useless without my hearing aids =) Clint's deafness is something that personally hits close to home with me. The superhero world is overrun with abled people. It's about time people like me who need a little extra help to get by on some things got a hero to look up to, too =)

Also, major shoutout to the people who've been giving me song recommendations. I listen to every single song y'all suggest, and I'm loving them. For this chapter, if you want extra emotions, listen to "What Sarah Said" - Death Cab for Cutie and then "Lay Me Down (Acoustic)" - Sam Smith in that order. I had these songs in mind when I wrote the chapter, so hopefully y'all will think they're fitting the way I think they are. (Not gonna lie, I got emotional writing where Clint wakes up. I get way too invested in writing hahaha!)

Keep leaving your thoughts and opinions. I love reading what you guys think about this new direction I'm taking the story, and I'm so glad to have so much support.

Enjoy! =)

Chapter 25

Natasha stayed with Clint in the SHIELD van as they raced him to the closest civilian hospital, listening to Palmer shout into his earpiece that Clint was in no condition to try to make it to a SHIELD hospital. She stayed with him as the medics began to stabilize him in the van, listening to them talk in a low stream of medical terms she couldn't quite understand. She stayed with him as they wheeled him into the hospital, listening to them shout out his condition to the doctors that had already been alerted to their arrival thanks to Coulson.

She stayed with Clint until they told her that she couldn't.

As she tried to wash her hands of his blood in the bathroom, she consciously made herself breathe. She felt that if she stopped telling herself when to inhale and when to exhale, she simply wouldn't. She would stop breathing altogether, and she would dying on the outside as much as she was dying on the inside. The water rushed over her blood-stained hands, but she couldn't get the red stain completely off her skin. Pressing one soapy hand into the other, she began to scrub as hard as she could.

"Natasha?"

She jumped at the sound of Coulson's voice, completely unprepared for it. She glanced up into the mirror in front of her and saw the agent standing behind her.

"It's going to be ok," Coulson said gently. He took a few tentative steps towards Natasha as the redheaded assassin kept scrubbing her hands. There were several spots that didn't look like they were about to come clean any time soon.

"I know," Natasha replied in a steady voice. "I just needed to get the blood off my hands."

"You've been in here for a while. I thought I'd come check on you," Coulson said. Natasha nodded without looking up at him.

"It's just the blood," she said. "It won't come off. There are some spots that are being extra stubborn. Blood is so stubborn."

"It is," Coulson diplomatically answered. Natasha heard him cross towards her with more confidence in his step. "You don't have to get it all off right now."

"I know. I just want to," she said dismissively. "So how'd they know it was us?"

"We don't have to talk about the mission right now." Coulson's voice was almost too quiet, and for some reason, it pissed her off. She glanced sharply over at him with green eyes, still digging into her hands to get them clean. Why the fuck wasn't the soap doing anything? She squirted some more onto her hands and kept rubbing hard.

"I want to," she tersely replied. "I want to get out there as soon as I can. The Omega needs to be stopped. He needs to be killed. He can't do this. There are laws for a reason, and he's breaking them, and he needs to be stopped. I need to stop him."

"You will," Coulson said reassuringly. She could feel him staring at her.

"I will," she stressed firmly. "But first I've got to get…all this…blood off."

"Natasha."

She began to scrub even harder. "It's not coming off."

"That's ok."

"It's not." She felt the pain of her skin growing more and more raw with each second. Her arms seemed to be moving all by themselves. "I've got to get it off. I can't stand feeling his blood on me. He was bleeding all over me, and I need it gone. He's so fucking stubborn."

Coulson was quiet for a few seconds. "Natasha."

"What?" The shout erupted from her throat louder than she'd expected, and she whipped her head around to glower fiercely at Agent Coulson. "I need to…" Her voice began to trail off as she blinked wildly, suddenly not knowing what she was going to say. "I need…"

"I know." Agent Coulson reached out and gently set a hand on her shoulder. Blinking hard, Natasha looked away from him and down at the sink, taking in the sight of her now unmoving hands. The water continued to rush over them, and she could feel the sting from where she'd rubbed off bits of her skin. "He's going to be ok. Just like you said—he's stubborn. He's not going to let something like this kill him."

Carefully listening to him, Natasha nodded her head. Clint was strong; he was the strongest person she'd ever known. For a brief second, she allowed herself to imagine what her life would be like without him. Life without Clint Barton didn't look like the kind of life she wanted to have. If she had to live without him, she could do it, but God, she really didn't want to.

"If I'd gotten there a little sooner—he asked for back up, and I was too slow getting there," she said quietly.

"It's not your fault," Coulson said firmly. "None of this is your fault. It's the Omega's fault. And if I know you they way I think I do, I know you're not going to let this defeat you. You're going to use this rage, this—this pain you're feeling right now, and you're going to let it fuel you when you come face to face with this son of a bitch next time. Am I right?"

Natasha looked at Coulson, her face serious. "Yes." She pressed her lips together as she tried to find the words to say. Her thoughts were swirling around in her head, and her emotions were at war in her chest, but she couldn't seem to get either side to coincide long enough for her to speak. She swallowed, her face crumpling for a few seconds as the wall in front of her heart fell. When she looked back at Coulson she looked at him with wet eyes. "I need him…to be ok."

"I know," Coulson said softly. And the thing was, Natasha knew he did.

For hours, Natasha sat with Palmer and Coulson in the waiting room. Her nervous energy threatened to tear her apart, but she used it as a challenge to keep herself calm. She could look calm if she wanted to. She'd been trained by the best of the best to look calm when she was anything but. So she looked at the magazines and read through articles of how to get the perfect smoky eye, the perfect sex noises from your partner, and the perfect summer body.

Palmer had been characteristically quiet, not offering up words of sympathy or support, nor did he pass the time by telling funny stories about the stupid shit Clint had done in the past to get everyone to laugh. He simply sat there with his eyes on the TV or on the ground, and he stayed still. And yet, Natasha could feel him silently giving her his quiet support as she gave him hers.

No one spoke about the mission or the Omega. No one spoke about what was going to happen next. They just sat there in their uncomfortable chairs and relived the night over and over again. There was no other choice. When Natasha had first sat down in the chair beside Palmer, she'd thought about how she needed to tell Clint about this. And then it struck her that she couldn't. How could she tell Clint about how worried she was about Clint when Clint was the one who was hurt?

"Do you want any coffee?" Palmer asked beside her. She nodded. "You, Coulson?"

"Yes, please."

Palmer got up and walked down the hall to find the coffee machines. Natasha looked over at him and watched him walk away. "When will forensics be able to get back to you on any fingerprints on the arrows?"

"I don't know. I haven't checked in with them. I just passed on the arrows to their department," Coulson replied. She waited for him to tell her that they shouldn't talk about the mission now, but he surprised her by not saying it. At this point, she wanted to talk; she wanted to fill the waiting area with noise so she could drown out the memory of the awful sounds that Clint had been making when she'd found him.

"I feel like we've been waiting forever," Natasha murmured out loud.

"Patience is a virtue," Coulson said wryly. She found it in herself to give him a small smile. It was odd for her to be sitting in a hospital waiting room with Agent Coulson and Agent Palmer—it was odd for her to be waiting with anyone but Clint. As she became increasingly aware of Agent Coulson's presence and Agent Palmer's offer to bring her coffee, she realized that these people were here for her just as much as they were there for Clint. The realization made her eyes sting a little bit, and she blinked several times to keep herself from crying right there on the spot.

A few minutes later, Palmer was back with two cups of coffee balanced in one hand and another cup of coffee in his other hand. Careful not to spill any of the cups, he slowly walked towards Coulson and Natasha. Natasha took hers from the tech specialist's hand and held it between her palms, allowing the hot cup to warm her hands. Even though Clint's bloodstains were still there, she'd been able to forget the feeling of his blood on her skin for a few minutes.

"They didn't have any hot tea down there," Palmer said. He didn't elaborate on the fact that he'd been looking for hot tea solely for Clint's benefit, but Natasha knew that that was why he'd said it.

Suddenly, a doctor came around the corner. "The family of Clinton Barton?"

"That's us." Coulson was up in a second. Natasha followed close beside him, Palmer on the other side as they walked up to the doctor. The doctor looked calmly and curiously at all three of them.

"My name is Dr. Parker. Are you his family?" he asked. Without hesitating, Natasha nodded.

"We're his team," she said without glancing at Palmer and Coulson beside her. "We're the closest thing he has to family."

Dr. Parker paused as he looked at all three of them, and that was when Natasha knew that she wasn't going to like what he was about to say. He took a breath. "Well, Mr. Barton was stabbed in the ears with two arrows. His body went into shock, and we nearly lost him because of that alone. The arrows ruptured his eardrums and caused severe damage to the middle and inner ear. Unfortunately, there's too much damage for us to medically repair, and as a result, that means there's not much we can do."

"What the hell does that mean?" Natasha angrily snapped. "Can he hear? Can he hear?"

"No," the doctor said simply. He stared at Natasha with sympathy in his eyes. "The damage was too severe. Mr. Barton is deaf."

"My God," Coulson breathed behind her.

Natasha balked, and she covered her hands over her face. "You're not serious."

"Ma'am…I'm so sorry," Dr. Parker genuinely replied.

"Can I go see him?" As she looked up at the doctor, she felt like a little kid asking for permission. Her eyes stung with tears, and honestly, she just wanted to get away from him so she could be with Clint. "Is he awake?"

"You can see him, but he's not awake right now. He probably won't be for another hour or so. We gave him a high dosage of painkillers to help relieve his discomfort. When he wakes up…he'll be in a great deal of pain. You'll want to think of a way to calm him down as quickly as possible because the realization that he can't hear will happen almost instantaneously. He'll be distressed and in pain." Dr. Parker gazed at her regretfully. "I'm so sorry."

Natasha didn't say anything else. She just turned and walked into the hospital room where she knew Clint lay unconscious without waiting for Coulson or Palmer. She crossed through the doorway, and she froze. Clint was lying on the bed with his eyes closed and his head wrapped in bandages. He was pale, so pale he looked like he could light up the room with how fucking pale he was. Natasha swallowed, and she took a few steps closer to him.

He's alive. He's alive. Natasha, he's alive, she silently told herself over and over. And yet, it didn't do a world of comfort as she stiffly worked her way over to the chair by his bedside and sat down. He was alive, but he'd never looked more broken or closer to death than he did right then.

He'salivehe'salivehe'salive.

"Shit," Palmer murmured out loud behind. "Shit."

"Agent Palmer—" Coulson started to speak, but he was cut off by an angry Palmer.

"Look at him. The Omega did this to him. That son of a bitch—"

"Agent Palmer." Coulson's tone was still even and quiet. "It won't do any good to be angry right now. At this moment in time, we need to focus on getting Barton better."

"Will he get better?" Palmer snapped. "He's deaf."

"That doesn't mean he's damaged," Natasha said softly. She felt Palmer and Coulson's eyes turn towards her. She remembered Clint telling her that just a month earlier when he'd learned more of her past. He'd had the faith in her to tell her that she wasn't damaged, just as she believe he wasn't damaged now, either.

Clint felt the pain before he felt his own awareness. It was dull, as if someone had pressed mute on a remote control; he knew that it was there, and he was perfectly aware of it, but he couldn't really feel it or make out where all it was spreading. He felt as though he were swimming underwater. From all the number of times he'd had to be on painkillers in the past, he knew that he was on some kind of hardcore drug that was numbing everything. His eyes weren't even open, and he was groggy and lethargic.

He had to open his eyes. The pain was starting to get worse with each passing second, and he wanted more of those drugs. He didn't like asking for pain medication, but God, this was some of the worst pain he'd ever felt. Forcing his eyes open, he blinked blearily and heavily. There was the familiar fluorescent lighting that he associated with hospitals, and if he tried to focus hard enough, he could see those pathetically thin blankets over his lap. Off to his right, there was a flash of red, and he tried to focus on that. Fuck, the pain was overwhelming.

There was warmth covering his hand. As his eyes began to focus, he saw Natasha. She was holding his hand and bringing it up to her throat. Natasha. Despite the pain, there was a warmth that filled his stomach to see her there. "Tash."

He knew he'd spoken, but he hadn't heard his voice speaking. He tried to open his mouth again, but Natasha looked at him with those green eyes of hers, and he saw her shaking her head at him. Frowning, he tried to figure out what she was saying. She was speaking, but he wasn't getting what she was saying.

"Can't—can't hear." Alarm started to fill his body as he realized that he couldn't hear himself speak again. Beneath his fingertips, he could feel the warm vibrations of Natasha's voice as she started talking. Blinking, Clint stared at her as she carefully lowered his hand, held up one finger for him to wait, and she started to write something down.

Clint knew what she was going to write before she'd finished writing. As he became more aware of his surroundings, he became more aware of his memory. He remembered being in the dark warehouse and then that pain. He remembered the pain in all its full swells before it'd been placed on mute the way it was now. His throat tightened as he realized that he had bandages wrapped around his head to cover his ears.

Natasha lifted the thing she'd been writing on so Clint could see that it was a notebook, and he saw what she'd written.

Back in the warehouse, someone took two of your arrows and stabbed you in the ears with them. Your eardrums are ruptured, and your middle and inner ear suffered severe damage.

"Ruptured?" Clint mumbled out loud as more of the fogginess continued to wear off. Clarity was slowly starting to return to him, but he couldn't seem to figure out how to make his mouth move for more than a few syllables at a time. Natasha looked at him with an expression he couldn't identify, and then she lowered her head to start writing again.

You're deaf.

Clint stared at the notebook when he saw the two words. The cloud over his brain caused by the medication seemed to lift a little bit as the shock of the words Natasha had written set deep into his bones. Frowning, his blue eyes darted over to her. He wanted to shake his head in disbelief, but he was in too much pain. Honestly, he felt that if he so much as moved his head, it'd explode into a thousand pieces. Natasha stared back painfully at him, and Clint knew that she wasn't fucking around—this wasn't the kind of joke she'd pull, anyway.

"Fix it?" It was strange—knowing he was speaking but not being able to really hear it. Panic started to make his chest feel tight. He didn't even know how loud he was speaking. He couldn't hear Natasha speak—that was why she'd put his hand to her throat when he'd woken up; he would know she was speaking to him.

There was too much damage.

"I—I can't—I don't—what—" Clint stopped talking as he realized that he still couldn't hear himself speak. And he wouldn't. With huge eyes, he gaped at Natasha. She looked so relieved and pained all at the same time. She took his hand again and placed it on the side of her neck again, moving forward so that she was sitting on the edge of his bed. Her lips moved, but he couldn't hear what she'd said. He could make out what looked like his name, and he could feel the vibrations of her voice again, but he couldn't hear her.

The panic began to flood in even more, and he started to breathe heavily. Suddenly, the room was spinning around him as he tried to catch his breath. Natasha was there, but she wasn't there, and all he could do was try to hear. He wanted to rip the bandages off his ears to show her that no, he really was fine. The only reason he couldn't hear was because the damn bandages had been there in the first place.

His chest grew so tight he thought he was having a heart attack. The room was too fucking small, and he couldn't stay there. He needed to be up high where he could breathe in the fresh air and see for miles and miles all around him—he'd be able to hear up there. He wouldn't be able to do a damn thing in here with all these walls around him. Everything was so closed in down here. Suddenly, Natasha's face was right in front of his, and she was holding either side of his face, shaking her head at him. She didn't bother trying to speak, but he could see she was telling him no.

Natasha kept shaking her head as she looked down at the stricken look on her partner's face. Clint's blue eyes were cloudy from a mixture of pain, shock, and pain medication, but they were bright and alert with panic. Generally, the archer was good at keeping himself closed off when it came to his thoughts and emotions, but just then, everything was written across his face as plain as day. He was terrified and horrified.

All of a sudden, his body went slack as if he'd given up a fight, and he stared at her with those broken eyes of his. She kept her hands on his face, lightly touching his forehead and smoothing back the bits of his hair that were sticking up through the gauze bandages around his head. Without turning his head, he looked away and off to the side, blinking rapidly and painfully.

Quickly, she pulled her hands away from him and scribbled something down on the notebook. She placed her hand on his arm, and he looked back.

You're going to be ok.

But as she showed him what she'd written, despite how strong she wanted to be for him just then, two tears fell from her eyes. She tried to press her lips tightly together to keep her emotions inside, to keep staying strong for him when he needed her to be, but she failed at it. Once those tears had fallen, more began to follow.

Clint's face crumpled as he saw hers fall apart. He began blinking even more quickly, the strange silence overwhelming, but then before he knew it, Natasha had moved farther up to close the distance between them, and she'd leaned forward, and his head was now against her chest where he didn't have to fall apart where she could see him. She gave him the privacy he needed while still being there with him.

Natasha didn't go back out into the waiting room until all signs of her tears were gone. Right after the doctor had come in, thoroughly examined a stony-faced Clint, explained his condition to him, and given him more painkillers to knock him out, Natasha's eyes were still red. She didn't want Palmer and Coulson to see her tearful and vulnerable, so she stayed by Clint's side.

He'd taken it better and worse than she'd hoped for all at the same time. She'd expected anger from him, a stubborn determination that she was wrong, even. But he hadn't given her that at all. He'd been accepting of it, almost as if he'd been expecting her to give him that diagnosis. He'd only fallen apart briefly, and it was because he'd seen her being a mess. Inside, Natasha chastised herself for breaking down in front of him like that. Her crying had been the last thing he should have seen, and yet, she'd been unable to help herself. When he'd opened his eyes, she'd felt relieved and afraid, unable to separate the two feelings from each other. He was awake, but she couldn't tell him just how she was feeling in that moment when she had to tell him about his hearing.

After the doctor had left, she'd moved back to her spot by his side, and she'd laid her hand gently on his cheek. The medicine already coursing through his veins, he'd turned his hand slightly into her palm as a look of peace came over his features. She'd moved her hand up to his hair, threading her fingers through and smoothing the unruly blond tufts the way she knew he liked.

As she walked back into the waiting room, Coulson and Palmer looked up to see her. Coulson was by her in a heartbeat. "Did he wake up? How is he?"

"He woke up. He was…upset." The word didn't feel right in her mouth; it didn't feel right to use it to describe Clint's feelings as that. He'd been more than upset—he'd been angry and panicked and devastated, but she couldn't bring herself to say that. Instead, she swallowed hard and kept her face calm and relaxed. "Thank you. For letting me be there with him when he woke up. To give him the news."

"I knew he'd take it the best from you," Coulson said quietly. "What's happening now?"

"He was in a lot of pain, so the doctor came in and checked him and gave him some more painkillers." Natasha felt like a robot answering any and all questions thrown her direction. "Last time I saw him, he was asleep."

"Good," Coulson said. "I'm going to do another coffee run. Do you want any?"

"Yes. Black is good," she murmured.

"I'm fine," Palmer added in a flat monotone. Coulson nodded once, and then he was gone. Silently, Natasha crossed to the chair beside Palmer, and she sat down.

"How was he really?" Palmer asked, his voice soft. Natasha considered lying to him, too, but when she looked up and saw the knowing look in his eyes, she knew he couldn't. She forgot that he knew Clint better than she did in some ways; in the back of her mind, she knew she should have known.

"Not good," she said in a stilted tone. "He was very upset."

"What the hell are we going to do," Palmer mumbled, the question open for anyone to answer. Natasha wished that someone would answer it for her because she didn't know.

"I don't know," she said honestly. She glanced over at Palmer. "Does he know American Sign Language?"

"Uh, kind of." Palmer didn't look at her. "He's fluent in it, but I don't remember the last time he used it. He had to learn it for SHIELD training."

"Good," Natasha said. "Mine's a bit rusty, but I can brush up on it."

"Coulson was talking about hearing aids, too," Palmer added.

"Good. Good. They'll be top of the line, too. If Coulson's getting involved," she replied.

"Yeah. He still has to be able to function and shoot straight," Palmer said, though from the way he said it, Natasha wondered if he were forcing the sound of a positive attitude because he didn't sound convinced at all of anything. She glanced at him again and saw him frowning at the floor.

"He doesn't need his hearing to shoot," she said. "He still has his eyes."

"Yeah. He does," Palmer vaguely answered.

"He speaks with his eyes and his hands. He'll be ok." Natasha knew that her voice sounded fake even to herself, and she knew she hadn't convinced Palmer of anything by the way that he finally glanced up at her. However, he didn't call her out on it. He nodded and let her think she'd done something in some way to comfort him.

Coulson walked back with two cups of coffee in his hand. Eagerly, Natasha stretched up and took her cup from him; she had a feeling that she'd be living on this stuff as long as Clint was here. She knew that Coulson planned to have Clint transported out of here to a SHIELD hospital as soon as Clint was stable enough to be moved, and really, she couldn't wait for that to happen. It wasn't much of a difference to be in a SHIELD hospital versus a civilian hospital, but Natasha could use any bit of familiarity to her.

"As soon as he's healed, I want to get him fitted for hearing aids straight away," Coulson said. "Did the doctor say anything about when he'll be stable enough for transportation?"

Natasha shook her head. "No. He just came in and wrote everything down for Clint to read about what had happened to him. He didn't say much to me."

"I'll have to ask him then." Coulson took a sip of his coffee, not even seeming to notice that it was still steaming until after the hot liquid touched his lips. "Dammit. That's hot. Palmer, do you want to go sit with him for a while?"

Palmer silently nodded and got up, walking away without so much as a look back towards the two agents. Natasha looked down at the dark cup of coffee in her hands, and she wished that she were anywhere but there. She wished that she were back in that warehouse but only a few minutes faster. She wished that she were beside Clint when that figure in the dark had tried to run at him. She wished that she'd done anything else.

She'd told Clint that he would be ok, and she didn't doubt it because he was Clint Barton—he was Hawkeye. She just needed him to believe it, too.